


An Arrangement

by ashesandhoney



Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, An alternate take on the parabatai bond, Angst, F/M, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Love Triangles, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Multi, Parabatai Bond, Pining, i am me and i will endgame ot3 but this has heavy love triangle tropes, that is too many alternate universe tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: This story is in an alternate world where Edmund Herondale never left the Clave and his three children grew up in the London Institute. In a world where Tessa was raised by the Starkweather family and Jem made it to adulthood before tragedy struck.William Herondale has a secret that no one can afford to have break into a scandal. To make sure it is all securely swept under the rug, his father is rushing him into a marriage with anyone who will have him as quickly as it can be arranged.Theresa Starkweather's family has been sweeping her under the rug for years and she is left scrambling to make sense of everything when the dour Institute she lives in is suddenly overrun by Herondales and her own family members desperate to make a positive impression on the minor Nephilim Royalty.
Relationships: Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray/Will Herondale, Jem Carstairs/Will Herondale, Tessa Gray/Will Herondale
Comments: 189
Kudos: 158





	1. Prologue: Theresa Starkweather and the Clockwork Angel

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the ficlet that started this idea in 2015. This is the first time I've gotten it together enough to post it to AO3. It's been a long road and I'm not 100% sure it's ready but I'm throwing it out there anyways because perfectionism is the enemy of both completion and joy. 
> 
> Shipping notes: 60% Wessa. 40% Heronstairs. 10% Jessa. 100% OT3. 
> 
> Warning tags: There is a reference or two to Tessa's mom getting pregnant through rape. There's stuff around abusive families, it's not on screen, it comes up in dialogue but it is in there.There's a bit of canon-typical violence here or there. 
> 
> Mostly though it's soppy tropy pining romance.

Tessa was seven years old on the day of the attack. She wouldn't remember it well as she got older. There was a man with too-large eyes like a frog's who repeated the same phrase on a loop in a rusty voice. There was a big carriage with a black lacquered door and bright purple taffeta curtains. Or maybe the lilac fabric belonged to a dress. There were the hands and the brown paper parcel and her mother's voice and a sword. It was the parts that her adult self most wanted explained that were lost. Things like the exact order of events. Things like why any of it had happened. Her memories of that were never clear.

The carriage pulled alongside them as they walked back from the cake lady's house.

Her mother had been taking her to the cake lady's house since she was just a baby, maybe even before then. Their rooms in the Institute were home but the cake lady's kitchen was her favourite place to be. There was a tall bookshelf on one wall, a big wood-burning stove in the far corner, and a dining table with a long wooden bench and a table cloth. Usually, there was cake or at least fresh bread and sometimes even fruit from the little garden out back if the weather was agreeable.

The cake lady always called Tessa by pet names like Darling and Little One and would crouch down in front of her to fuss over her dress or her hair ribbons and give her a kiss on the forehead. She had soft blonde hair streaked with gray and little crinkly lines around her eyes. The cake lady also had a husband who wasn't quite as kind or seen quite as often. Tessa glimpsed him sometimes in his study at the end of the hall and her mother would say polite things to him and he would say polite things back but it was a little bit like talking to Great-Grandfather Aloysius: a responsibility that had to be completed on penalty of rudeness.

Maybe it was the penalty of rudeness that made her mother stop and turn to look at the big black carriage. She stood straight and tall with sharp eyes trained on the windows that were too high for Tessa to see.

She craned her head for the first few lines of the conversation but it was about street names and train stations. Dull. Adult business. Nothing to interest a seven-year-old. Besides, her mother's skirt was in the way of her getting a good view. Tessa stayed close. Her mother used a glamour rune to keep them from being noticed by passersby and it didn't work on children unless they stayed close. Tessa had learned this as she learned how to walk.

Tessa turned her attention to her very important package. She fiddled with the brown paper tied around the loaf of bread that the cake lady had given her. She was hoping that the package might contain cinnamon bread or some other treat. The cake lady had winked when Tessa's mother had scolded that, "If we came any more often, I think she would turn into a sticky bun. Then what would I do? All this trouble for a sticky bun?" Then there had been laughter and the promise that, "She's worth any trouble."

Tessa’s thoughts were on that. On sticky buns and that warm kitchen and her brown paper package full of baked goods. The adults talked over her and she tucked herself in against her mother’s skirts and waited for the adult business to be finished.

“Absolutely not,” her mother’s tone had been polite and boring, and then all at once, her mother was angry.

It happened in a flash. It usually did. Her mother's temper flared like cannon fire. Brief and bright and cacophonous but then gone. It happened often enough that Tessa knew the tone and the way her jaw would set but it didn't often flare on public streets.

Tessa had been trying to lift the corner of the wrapping on the bread to see what kind it might be when her mother's voice snapped out.

"Don't you dare."

Then things went very wrong, very quickly.

The man with the frog eyes appeared from the crowd and picked Tessa up. She was still a very small child and he simply grabbed her around the ribs and hoisted her into the air. She shrieked and kicked. Either her mother's magic held or the man with the iron hands had magic of his own.

Later, one of the few details that stuck was that no one had even glanced at them as she screamed and her mother pulled a sword. Tessa would remember that no one came to help. No one even looked up.

People should have noticed.

Someone should have helped.

No one did. Tessa's mother was fast. For all that the men in the Institute liked to say that she was improperly trained, she had all the strength and speed of a Shadowhunter. She stepped around the man and swung the sword at his back before he could take a jagged step to follow her.

The sword clanged.

Even through her panic and her confusion and her irrational worry about her loaf of bread, Tessa knew that was the wrong sound. The sword was there, lodged from behind in the man's ribs but he was still turning. His feet were heavy and slow, slamming into the ground on each step. The blade twisted and it squealed with the twisted sound of metal on metal like a train grinding to a halt. Tessa heard her mother call her name.

The hands around her body were tightening as the man juddered and the shrieking metal on metal sound came again.

Tessa screamed again.

The first time had been shock and fear. This time it was pain. The hands around her body were squeezing. Relentless and unthinking and too strong.

The world blurred with a cracking sound that Tessa wouldn't understand came from her body until long after someone had explained it to her.

The last thing she remembered was a flair of golden light that made her eyes water and then the world had gone dark. 

* * *

The world didn't come back into focus until she was in bed. Dark stone, dark wood, the smell of candles because witchlight was too harsh. Tessa was home and she was stuck. Wrapped up too tight and weighed down by blankets. She wanted to squirm away but she was too tired.

"Just tell me if she will recover," her mother's voice was saying.

Tessa couldn't hear the answer but if she turned her head she could see bone coloured robes. Silent Brothers. She was sick and the Silent Brothers had come just like they had when Mr. Branksome had been injured fighting demons. The thought made her feel better. Mr. Branksome had been fine and she had caught sight of him at breakfast the next day, eating porridge and looking like nothing had been wrong at all. The same thing would happen to her. She closed her eyes and tried to feel better.

"I am not debating her parentage with a walking skeleton monk. It is not your business," her mother was angry but her mother got angry whenever Tessa got hurt. That time she had fallen down the stairs. That time she had cut her hand on a knife that she wasn't supposed to touch. She wasn't worried. Not really. Tessa was starting to doze as the silence stretched.

Her mother’s voice interrupted the pause and dragged her sleepy thoughts back up to the very edge of waking up.

"Something drove it away. I don't understand what any more than you do but it saved her life. Another few moments and-" her mother stopped talking and then said, "I only care that my daughter will recover."

This time, Tessa heard the Silent Brother’s words: “Your daughter is singular.” His voice spoke into her mind not her ears. It was papery and dry and more thought than sound. His voice was even and flat like it had been rolled too thin. Her mother was still angry. When Tessa forced her eyes open, she could see the pacing form of her mother in her blue dress and the still form of the Silent Brother.

“My daughter is bright and beautiful and deserves the world. I will not have you turning her singularity against her.”

“The Clave may not accept her,” the voice in her head said.

Tessa had seen Silent Brothers at a distance before but none of them had ever spoken to her. She had never been given a window into a conversation. Silent Brothers spoke to the grown-ups about important grown-up matters. It was both horrifying and thrilling to be given access to that world of grown-ups. The Silent Brother knew she was awake and had chosen to tell her this.

Her mother just hummed a response, a non-answer. Tessa knew that hum. It usually meant that the answer was no but she would be learning why the answer was no in some demonstrable lesson. The Silent Brother did not know that hum. The Silent Brother did not know either of them.

Tessa faded out of the conversation and back down into sleep. Maybe there was no more conversation. Maybe her mother ordered the Silent Brother away and he went because no one argued with Elizabeth Starkweather-Gray any longer than they absolutely had to. Maybe Tessa just slept through the interesting parts.

* * *

She woke up eventually.

A slow dreamy kind of waking that she would only half remember come morning.

Her mother smoothed back her hair. She had dropped something around Tessa’s neck. A very fine gold chain, the kind Tessa usually wasn’t supposed to touch because it might break if it was pulled on. Her mother’s hand settled on the pendant and held it against Tessa’s chest. The weight of her hand was warm and familiar and it cupped the ticking angel against Tessa’s heart.

“When I was first pregnant and we knew you were coming, your father - the man I chose to be your father - he received a gift from his employer. A little clockwork angel on a chain. I didn’t like it much. I thought it was ugly and industrial but he promised that it would bring me good fortune and bring the child safely into the world. It seemed like superstitious nonsense. But I took it and I wore it because it was polite and who doesn't need a little good fortune?”

Tessa was halfway to drifting off again but she so rarely heard stories of her father that she tried to force her eyes open and really listen. Her mother kissed her forehead and pet her hair and kept the angel ticking against her heart.

“It turns out that there is truth in all the superstitious nonsense that people throw around in their myths and legends. The faeries of my mother’s stories with their bowls of milk and stolen names are really out there and many of them don't mean us well. There is truth in this necklace as well.”

“After my husband died,” her mother continued but there were no details about that event forthcoming. Tessa was too tired to complain or demand answers about how her father had died. “I went first to my sister but they followed us there. They chased me back into the strange clubs that my husband’s employer had been so fond of. They were my enemy and yours. Even then. Even before you were fully realized. They wanted things from you. So we fled to the enemy of my enemy in the hopes that they would be our friend. The Shadowhunters took us in, you and I, and I thought we were safe. I had thought that we could stop running."

Tessa felt a brush of fingers against the bandages around her ribs and shivered. It didn’t hurt. Her mother was gentle and didn’t hurt her as she rearranged the blankets and tucked her in snugly under the blankets.

“I will not put all my trust in a bit of metal and a magic spell to protect you,” her mother said.

A long pause and then: “It worked today. All golden light and metal wings. We were lucky. Both of us. The angel saved you as I had been told it would.”

Tessa remembered the light but not the wings. It had been lost in the confusion but if her mother had seen it, it hadn’t been a dream. The light had happened. The light had pushed away the metal hands and freed her.

“It was impressive and terrifying and it worked but if they keep coming for you, someday it will not work. Someday they will find their way around that protection and drag you off into the dark. I’m not going to let that happen, Tessie.”

The words were a promise. An oath.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” were the last words her mother ever said to her.

Tessa awoke in the morning in the infirmary with her ribs still cracked and her memories still muddled and her mother gone. The clockwork angel remained on its chain, around her neck. Her mother had brought down one of the quilts from their rooms and laid it over the drab Institute sheet.

It was a few days before Tessa realized that her mother wasn’t coming home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was added later (it's the 7th one to be posted) so if you got a notification and it was weird, that's why.


	2. The Training Room

When Tessa climbed out onto her window ledge, the moon was high and the Institute was quiet despite all the extra unwanted visitors running around the place. She braced her foot on a knot of vines and pulled herself out onto the wall. She clung there against the dark stone wall and took a deep breath of night air before she started to climb. The wall was cold and rough even through her gloves but she was used to this route and it didn’t slow her down. 

The route was practiced and the weather was clear and dry so it was an easy climb to make from her third-floor bedroom to the training room in the attic. She knew where each handhold was and climbed quickly up to balance on the ledge below the attic window. Tessa balanced on the sill with one hand still holding the vines above her head and unlatched the shutters.

She pushed the shutters inward and blinked against the brightness. 

The witchlight stones were turned all the way up and two people were standing halfway down the long space facing the targets at the far end of the hall. They both turned to look at her as the window swung in. The nearer of the two was a tall woman with golden blond hair pulled away from her face in a tight bun. She had bright blue eyes and the little puzzled frown did nothing to detract from how gorgeously beautiful she was. The man with her was just as striking. His eyes were a darker shade of that same blue, his hair was black as ink and his expression was more openly shocked. 

Annoyance hit Tessa before anything else before shock caught up. 

This was her space. 

These visitors had taken over the rest of the Institute and her uncle and grandfather had made it very clear that that meant that she couldn't use those rooms until they were gone. She had been taking her meals in her room, she had been sitting in her room to read her books, she hadn't been to the library or the drawing-room in days. She was sick of her own four walls, her bedspread, her chair, her table. She hated the rest of the house but after three days inside her own rooms, she was starting to pine after the dark drafty halls. 

The training room after midnight was hers. 

It was one of the few places in the house that she actually enjoyed. They stared at her like she was a burglar when they were the ones who were intruding on her routine. She wasn't going to apologize to these beautiful intruders.

"Good evening," Tessa said tightly. 

"Good evening," the man said. 

His shock shifted into something more careful. He was studying her. Usually, scrutiny made her want to curl up in a ball and hide but the anger carried her through that feeling. She turned her back on him and his narrowed eyes and tilted head. 

Tessa crossed the room behind them to pull her bow case out from the bottom of the weapons cabinet. Everything in there was old and dusty and her case was just as battered but inside, it was pristine. She couldn't be guaranteed that no one else would open the cabinet but she was certain no one would pull out the bottom-most archery kit and find hers. It was a mundane set but she lacked the skills or materials it would have taken to repair the Nephilim sets in the other kits. 

"What are you doing up here at this hour?" the woman asked. 

Tessa snapped open the case and sat down on the bench beside the cabinet to check the strings and fletching. She looked up at the two of them who were watching her with open curiosity but no hostility. She turned her attention back to her task. She spoke without looking up. Her voice was tight and nervous and she hated that but she wasn't going to let that stop her. She was in this now. 

"My great-grandfather doesn't believe in training young women. It is easier to get a decent practice session if he is asleep and unaware that I am doing it," she said. 

"So this is a regular activity for you?" the man asked. 

"Yes," she said. 

"Where did you learn to shoot if you've never been trained?" 

"Books." 

"Books?" he was smiling now. 

It was hard to say what kind of smile it was. It wasn't cruel but it also wasn't very kind. Almost mocking. Tessa pressed her lips into a hard line and looked up at him. She still held an arrow in one hand. She had been checking the point to make sure it didn’t need repair. Dark blue eyes, that half-smile, his head cocked to the side like a bird. 

Beautiful and confident and amused. 

How dare he mock her? The bastard. 

"I chose the bow for a reason. I'm weaker than the average Shadowhunter," she said that like a challenge but neither of the strangers rose to the bait to say something cruel. "I chose a long-range weapon that requires accuracy over strength. Finger positions and techniques can be learned from a book and mastery can be measured by power and accuracy. I know when I'm doing it wrong because I can't hit the target. I might have progressed faster with a teacher but you can learn quite a bit from books if you bother to read them." 

The woman let out a laugh that was tinkling and infectious and drew everyone's attention. Tessa could imagine a laugh like that drawing the attention of everyone in a ballroom no matter the size of the party. She was still laughing when she shoved the man in the shoulder. She wore training gear and held a long thin sword in one hand. 

"Oh yes, William, you should read a book," she said with a giggle. 

"You're a bother, aren't you? Ignore my sister, she is a terror," William said to Tessa. 

“I am not.” 

“You are. Isn’t she?” he said. 

“She seems quite charming and she has a large sword, you would be wise to use your best manners,” Tessa said. 

That got another tinkling laugh from the sister who shook her sword in her brother’s direction and then plopped down on the bench beside Tessa to look at her arrows. That was all it took. Suddenly they were both treating her like a friend. The woman came to sit beside Tessa and lean in conspiratorially and say, "Will is just jealous. He can't use a bow to save his life. He probably couldn't even hold it the right way around. His weapons are all blades. Throwing knives and short swords. I'm Ella Herondale, I didn't get your name before Will started being grumpy." 

"Tessa Starkweather," she said. 

"Lovely to meet you," Ella said with a glance at her brother as though something much deeper was meant by it all. 

"I'm not being grumpy," Will said. 

"You didn't even greet the lady," Ella said. 

"It is lovely to make your acquaintance, Miss. Starkweather," he said. 

Once again it wasn't nice. The sarcasm dripped off the words and Tessa bit her tongue and set her jaw. Her usual reaction to casual cruelty was to quietly excuse herself to the side of the room. She put that impulse to the side. Not tonight. This was her space. Her training room. Her witching hour. 

These people were hell-bent on ruining her evening after already destroying her last chance of getting out of this Institute before she died. She raised her chin and met his eye again. Maybe she was lucky that her uncle had caught wind of her grandfather’s attempts to set up an introduction with William Herondale and swept in as he had. 

Her grandfather was hellbent on getting her married off before he died but every invitation, every suggestion, every possibility was more abhorrent than the last. At least William Herondale had been born in the same decade as her. She’d been so hopeful before her uncle and Melody had rolled into town and she’d been sent to her room like a dirty secret no one wanted to see. 

Perhaps she was lucky to have avoided it. This boy was beautiful but he was obviously an unpleasant person. She stood up and walked towards him. He watched her with that same sarcastic tilt to his head and the little smile twisting his mouth. Tessa held his gaze and set her jaw in response. She would stand and fight this battle. Her family had reasons to hate her, William was just being a jackass. 

"Why are you in such a delightful temper, Mr. Herondale?" she asked in her closest approximation of his tone. 

"I've spent the last three days in the company of your family, it is enough to put anyone in delightful humour," he said. 

"I've spent the last twenty-one years in the company of my family, I am well aware. And yet, I still manage civility. You should try harder," she said. 

Ella was delighted by that and actually clapped her hands as she laughed at her brother. Tessa stood up and slung her quiver over her shoulder and walked past him to take her place on the line to do her warm-ups. She waved a hand at him and he stepped out of her way. His sister was delighted. All smiles and little laughs. Tessa ignored them both. The bright bubbly Ella and the dark stormy Will were a distraction. She had pinned hopes on these people and every one of those hopes was in shambles now. She didn't want to dwell on that. She just wanted to run her drills and go back to bed. 

They watched her as she moved from warm-ups to simple target pivots. 

"Can you do moving targets that well?" Will asked after Tessa had run through her quiver and crossed the room to retrieve her arrows so she could start the next set. She did not look at him as she pulled them loose from the straw-stuffed targets that she had rigged up herself months ago. They were ragged and she was going to have to replace the burlap soon. 

"No. I can do stationary targets while I'm in motion but I haven't had enough practice with moving targets. It's hard to do inside and alone," she said. 

"Try this," Will said. 

He found a set of wood pieces he could throw into the air as makeshift targets. Tessa didn't do well hitting them. She got maybe half but it was frustrating to miss so many. She stalked across the room to gather up the arrows. This was the first time she'd ever shown her skills to an audience and she'd made a fool of herself with it. She pulled her arrow out of one of the pieces and dropped it on the floor with a thud. Will followed in her wake and gathered up the pieces. 

"You're completely self-trained?" Will asked. 

"Don't mock me. You're a stationary target. You, I can hit," she said. 

Will laughed like it was a joke and he pushed her back towards the line where she had been shooting from. His hands were on her arms. Far too personal. Far too close. It only lasted a moment and she was wearing a jacket from a set of gear that didn’t fit right so she couldn’t feel his skin but the pressure of his hands held too much of her attention. 

“I wasn’t mocking, I promise,” he said. 

"Ell, can you throw?" Will asked. 

Ella happily took his place with a pile of wood and gave him a grin. He came to stand beside Tessa and she took an immediate step back. He had a set of throwing knives between his knuckles and he took one and held it loosely between the fingers of his throwing arm and said, "You need to track where it's going to be. You're using speed to hit it where it is but if you follow it. Here, watch. Toss me one," Ella did and Will tracked it and hit it out of the air with the knife with a satisfying clunk. "You aim for where it's going to be so by the time it gets there, your knife - or arrow - is already there." 

Tessa considered him for a moment but there was no sarcasm in this. There wasn't even any condescension. He spoke like he was a teacher or a friend giving advice. He held her gaze and waited. She wasn’t sure how to respond. His expression softened just a little and he glanced down. It was almost an apology or at least a recognition of his previous rudeness. 

"You're very good," Will said. "You could be even better. Track the arc, aim where it will be, shoot it out of the sky." 

The compliment sat heavy in the air and Tessa didn’t know what to do with it so she turned back to the weapon in her hands. That at least made sense. 

Will stood back behind her and Tessa could feel his attention on her. She closed her eyes and pushed that awareness to the side. He shouldn't even be here. She did not care what he thought. She nodded at Ella who tossed the target slowly. Very slow. She hit it easily and properly. Dead center. Better. Not so embarrassing. It was good advice.

"Can you do it faster than that?" she said at the same time that Will said, "Don't go so easy on her." 

Ella cracked another grin at them and threw it faster. A nice easy arc. In the noise and the clatter, none of them noticed that the door had opened until someone spoke. 

"What in Raziel's name are the two of you doing still up here?" 

Tessa spun, bow still notched to look at the door. A young man with an angular face and dark hair streaked with silver stood there and she dropped the bow to point it at the floor. He looked at her and his eyes were shot through with silver just like his hair. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from those eyes for a long time. For a moment, she thought he must be one of the fae but his sleeves were pushed up and he had runes on his forearms. 

“We made a friend,” Ella said in a bright voice. 

“It is late, isn’t it?” Will said. 

“It’s very late, I was expecting Ella in the library,” the stranger said to Will but he was watching Tessa like he wasn’t sure what to make of her.

“Jem, this is Tessa Starkweather, she’s Melody’s younger cousin,” Ella said with a tone like it was all very significant, “Tessa, this is James Carstairs. Jem made the poor decision to become my brother’s parabatai but he is otherwise an exemplary and wonderful person.” 

“Shush, Ell,” Will said. “What are the two of you meeting to discuss in the wee hours of the morning?” 

“We were meeting to determine the best way to go about sabotaging Melody’s attempts to win you over but we don’t need to do that now,” Ella said. 

“Why,” Will said. 

It wasn’t a question. He said it in a flat angry tone like it was a curse word. 

“Because I’m about to insist that Tessa join me for breakfast and I suspect that Melody and her father will throw such a fit over that that we won’t need to find ways to tactfully disrupt their horrible courting methods,” Ella said.  
  
“They would throw a fit,” Tessa said. 

“Why?” Will asked. 

This time it was a question. He was still fiddling with one of his throwing knives and he turned to cock his head at her. He was taller than her and broad. He shouldn’t have been so good at looking like a curious bird. 

“I’m the black sheep of the family,” she said. 

“Apparently but I don’t understand why,” Will said. She frowned at him. “You’re disobedient and climb up the walls to train yourself on weaponry but that hardly seems worth locking you away and not introducing you to guests.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Tessa saw Jem’s expression shift at that information. Concern and confusion and she was about to get caught in his eyes again so she dragged her attention away and fiddled with the fletching on the arrow she still held. 

“Reginald just doesn’t want the competition,” Ella said. 

“Competition?” Tessa asked. 

“You’re both prettier and smarter than Melody,” Ella said.

Tessa blinked at her. She said it like it was a flat statement. Tessa started to shake her head but Ella was still talking. “You’d make Melody look like a simpering idiot in an expensive dress and while, yes, she is a simpering idiot in an expensive dress, one can understand why her father might want to avoid any comparisons that would highlight those traits.”

“It isn’t that. I can’t bear runes,” she said which was only a tiny piece of the truth. She said it like it meant nothing. Just a statement of fact. Her grandfather always said things like that like they were just statements of fact. 

The girl is unredeemable, such a tragedy but nothing to be done. Bad blood. Weak. She tried to find that nonchalance and found that words didn’t hurt quite as much when she was the one saying them. 

Tessa held Ella’s gaze as she said, “I’m weak and that’s embarrassing to them.” Not the whole story but enough for strangers in the middle of the night. 

“They’re idiots,” Ella declared. “But we already knew that.” 

They were all considering her now. The three of them were spread out around the room. Tessa gathered up her quiver and went to collect the arrows and check the points. She was going to need to replace them sooner than she had expected after shooting solid wood instead of the hay stuffed targets. She passed the squares back to Ella who took them without comment for a minute. 

“You’re coming to breakfast,” Ella said. 

Tessa looked at them. She was cradling her quiver in her arms, holding it like a baby or a child’s precious toy. She consciously dropped it and let it hang from her hand by the strap. Cheerful demanding invitations did not land in her lap. Even when she had been young and everyone had thought that she was normal, she had still been the orphan child, following Melody around like a lost puppy. People invited her along because they wanted Melody there and she was an included part of the package. 

She would not go. She did not want to speak to her uncle again. She did not want to watch Melody be charming and flirtatious. She did not want to endure the scolding that she would undoubtedly get later. It wasn’t worth it. The novelty of the invitation and the big friendly smile was not worth what it would cost. 

She opened her mouth to say that but she caught another glance from Will that threw off her resolve. 

“Yes, I’d love you to join you,” she said instead.

Then she put her things away and fled before she could get caught in another conversation. 


	3. This Particular Disaster

Will had retreated to this dull mouldering empty room not long after the archer girl had ducked out of the training room. He’d rarely managed to annoy someone quite so thoroughly or so quickly. He considered making apologies but he didn’t want to encourage anyone. He didn’t want apologies to be seen as interest. 

He stared at his face in the mirror and tried not to think. He was currently turning a fantasy of just walking out in the middle of the night, sleeping in the station, and catching the first train in the morning. He didn’t even care if it took him back to London. 

As long as it was headed somewhere that wasn’t here. 

A lifetime in this building was an abhorrent possibility. A lifetime of bad food and that miserable old man and the disembodied heads hanging from the walls and being ordered out of the room before company could arrive had made the other Miss Starkweather sharp and defensive and unable to take a compliment.

But hadn’t destroyed her. She quietly slipped around the rules and roadblocks her family threw in her way and did what she wanted. Will was pretty sure being born into this gloomy pile would have destroyed him. He hadn’t even been here for a week and he was a miserable wreck. 

Or Jem was. Their emotions were so tangled and overlapped that it was hard to tell where each feeling started. 

Jem was also headed this way. Will could feel that too. 

Parabatai always had some awareness of one another. It was part of what made parabatai teams so valuable in a battle. When this awareness had started to grow, Will had brushed it off as just that. He knew where Jem was in a fight so they could fight in close quarters without cutting through one another with mistimed blades. But that awareness didn’t stretch down corridors. That awareness wasn’t supposed to tell you when your parabatai’s joints ached. 

Their parabatai bond was deeply broken.

Will could feel Jem’s emotions as clearly as if they were his own. Will felt Jem’s tiredness. Felt the ache in his wrists. Felt his annoyance and his fear of being caught sneaking around after dark. Will knew that Jem was thinking that the last thing they needed was to get caught sneaking into one another’s rooms. 

He was pretty sure that he knew that because he knew Jem and not because their thoughts were bleeding together too. He prayed that was true. He almost prayed aloud to Raziel or whatever angel was listening that their bond wasn’t so broken that they were sharing thoughts. 

Jem interrupted him by pushing through the door before he could get to saying anything aloud. Their thoughts weren’t being shared. If they were, Jem would have made fun of him for even thinking about praying to Raziel. 

“Hi,” Jem said and he sounded exhausted. 

He crossed the room and dropped down onto the chair by Will’s fire and stared at the flames, unseeing. His hair was rumpled around his face and his shirt was unbuttoned at the collar but he was otherwise wearing the same clothes he had been wearing at dinner and when he’d come to fetch Ella in the training room. Will could almost watch him sit there and pretend that he was just anyone else. Some things needed to stay in the past and Will was - as always - failing to leave them there. 

“What?” Will asked and too much of his mood came through in his tone. 

Jem looked up at him with sad silver-flecked eyes. 

There was a little less brown every day. A little less black in his hair. A little less colour in his cheeks. The Silent Brothers had estimated that he would have no more than five years even if he rationed the yin fen carefully. That had been six years ago. It was speeding up now. The silver had crept in slowly, a strand at a time, but now Will was sure there was more of it every day. 

“Stop worrying over me,” Jem said when he caught the look of concern. 

“That’s not why you’re here,” Will said. 

“No, but maybe it’s a good reason to leave.” 

“Go on then,” Will said bowing and waving a hand at the door. 

Shared emotions meant they couldn’t escape it when one of them was a cranky bastard. 

Jem did not get up and leave. Jem barely raised his eyebrows before settling back into his seat and turning his attention back to the flames. Will could behave like a bastard and Jem would just ignore it. Most people got riled, annoyed, angry when he let his worst moods out into open air but Jem took it all in stride as he fiddled with a tassel on a cushion. 

“Have you made a decision about Melody Starkweather?” Jem asked. 

“You too?” Will snapped. “Is it your business now? Are you spending your evenings scheming with my sister to get me all paired off?” 

“I didn’t come up here to start a fight.”

“And yet.”

“William,” Jem stretched out a hand towards him and for a moment Will imagined that he might do it, might get up and cross the room and touch him. Take his hand or stroke his cheek or pull him into a hug they way he used to when one of them got upset. Instead, the hand just dropped. Jem left it dangling over the arm of the chair. Discarded like a dirty shirt or a child’s toy. Will had to twist his own hands into fists to keep from going and grabbing that discarded hand and holding it tight. 

Jem had better self-control than Will did. Especially in this. He folded up his emotions and packed them away and Will could feel it. He could feel it as each rain cloud or lightning bolt in Jem’s mood was tucked away into some vault inside him. Oh, they still spilled over but they were tidier now. The idea of anger rather than the fire and fury of it. 

They had met when they were eleven years old. First-year students at the Academy. They’d both been so far from home and everything they knew. Will walked into that school a minor celebrity because his father was the Head of the London Institute. He had thought Jem was strange and too quiet. Jem was farther from home than he was and many children in the far-flung Institutes trained locally instead of being sent away to Alicante so Jem hadn’t had the chance to bring any friends or rivals with him as Will did. 

But he was good. 

That’s what had caught Will’s attention on that first day. Jem Carstairs was lined up on the field with all the other boys who had known each other since they were children and stood down the line. He stood a little apart from the ascendants and a little apart from the big families. Quiet and watchful until it was his turn. He’d done fine on the obstacle course but most of the born Shadowhunters did but when he picked up the first of the weapons, it was obvious. 

He was better than Will and he was better than Will’s friends from London. 

Will had first been drawn to him because he could throw knives with uncanny accuracy and Will wanted to be able to do it too. Jem’s quiet careful facade had broken into a bright smile the minute Will suggested they train together. He’d been beautiful then. Even as a gawky twelve-year-old who was all elbows and angles, he had beautiful eyes and a wonderful smile. 

They’d been friends from that first knife throwing lesson. Jem had adjusted his fingers for him and laughed at his jokes and Will had known that this was someone worth holding onto. 

They were inseparable by the time Will took him along to London for Christmas that year. No one was surprised when they were parabatai by fourteen. 

Then Jem had gone home to Shanghai for a visit after graduation and almost died. 

“You’re staring at me.” 

“You’re so pretty,” Will said. 

Jem looked up at him. No laugh but an eye roll and an echo of amusement. 

Close enough. 

Will flashed him a smile and he returned it, reluctant but real. Jem smiled so rarely these days. It vanished too quickly but Will savoured the fact that he’d managed to wring a smile out of him at all. 

Jem sat quietly. His hand dangled empty off the arm of the chair but otherwise, he was the picture of tranquility. He looked for all the world like neither this disaster nor any disaster had ever befallen anyone. He looked calm and quiet and utterly at ease. Will had a charming mask that he could slap on for people like Melody Starkweather but it wasn’t as complete as Jem’s serene and calm expression. 

Will loved the moments when Jem let the emotions out of the bag. He liked Jem excited or angry or passionate. He did not like it when Jem folded up all his emotions and tucked them away out of sight and out of mind. There would be no shaking them out of him, nor goading them out of him, once he was calm, he would stay infuriatingly calm. 

“If you’re not awake making decisions, what are you up thinking about? Don’t tell me you’re not thinking. Your thoughts are rattling around in your head so loudly, I’m surprised I can’t hear them.” 

“I’m thinking about growing up around people who hate you.” 

“This is about the other Starkweather girl.” 

“No.” 

Jem looked at him, raised his eyebrows. 

“Why should I marry either of them?”

Jem scrunched up his face like this conversation pained him before it even began. It probably did. Will wanted Jem mad. He didn’t want to deal with the perfect even calm. He wanted Jem to reflect back all his worst impulses at him. He wanted to yell and stomp around and let the unfairness boil over. 

When Jem didn’t respond, Will opened his mouth and let it boil over for himself.   
  
“Why does it matter who I marry? I would just marry the damn cat if it’ll shut him up,” Will said. “This is my father’s idea. Not mine. It doesn’t matter. Who it is doesn’t matter.” 

“It matters, Will, of course, it matters.” 

“Why? You aren’t signing on to have in her your b-”

Jem didn’t let him warm to that theme. He cut Will off. A raised hand, a sharp spike of feeling Will was too distracted to identify. A flat look that made Will’s mouth snap shut. 

“No,” Jem said. “I just have to live with whatever decision you make. I am not signing up for anything but any choice you make is going to spill over onto me. Your emotions spill over onto me. Your life spills over onto me. You’re like a house on fire and I cannot move away. The heat, the smoke, the threat of collapse, it is always my problem. If you marry Melody Starkweather and spend the rest of your life annoyed at everything she says, I will have to feel that. Not merely listen to it, Will, but feel every wave of annoyance. Your terrible decision-making abilities are my problem. So I just want some idea about what you’re thinking.” 

Will bristled but Jem just waved him off. 

“I’m dying.” 

The entire conversation stopped. The entire storm of emotion, Will’s building desire to have a yelling match with anyone over anything, his aggravation, all of it. Stopped. The bottom dropped out and the anger fell away and Will couldn’t look too hard at the feeling that was left behind. 

“Don’t,” Will said. 

Jem pushed on. Eyes intent. Leaning in. Forcing Will to pay attention to him. 

“I am. I am dying and when I go, I’d like to be able to convince myself that you won’t be completely miserable for the rest of your life. You deserve love and trust and unconditional support. If you can’t have that, I would at least like to know that you have someone you can talk to. Can you imagine being 80 years old and listening to Melody still talk about hats and tart recipes?” 

“Maybe I like that she bakes.” 

“You don’t.”

Will glared. Jem met his eyes and then turned back to the fire. Will could feel his emotions simmering on the other end of the bond. 

When Will found his voice again, the emotion he was trying to suppress was soaked through every word. 

“I already fell in love. Each of us only gets one great love story in a lifetime and I’ve used mine up. You can talk about love and trust and unconditional support all your want but I already had it.” 

Jem didn’t look at him. He set his calm mask in place more securely but Will could see it pulling at the edges. Could feel it pulling at the edges. Either Jem was going to scream at him or Jem was going to cry. As much as he’d wanted that outburst a moment ago, he regretted pushing the issue when he could see the effect it was having. 

Will sighed and dropped into the chair across from him and pulled his feet up on the seat like a child and looked at the flame without really seeing it. 

They’d been able to talk like that once. 

Once it wouldn’t have been so unwelcome. 

Jem pulled his emotions back into order. Will felt the effort. Once, they’d had to touch for the bond to bleed emotions this hard. Now they just needed to be in the same room. 

Jem steeled his resolve and finally looked at him. He was angry now. A cold and dark mirror image of Will’s fire and brimstone. Will flinched even before he said a word. 

“Don’t make this my fault,” Jem said. 

Will blinked. “It’s not. That’s not-” 

Jem sighed. “Isn’t it? Aren’t I the one who came back from Shanghai needing you?” 

“I always needed you.” 

“Not like that.” 

“Yes, just like that. Always. I loved you long before I understood it. That you were smart enough to make sense of it first doesn’t make it your idea. You don’t get credit for that.” 

Jem smiled. The cold flash of anger was gone. He ran his fingers through his hair and shook it out. Purple marks stood out like bruises under his eyes. Will wanted to find some way to prove that he had never blamed Jem for anything. Never. 

“And we can both agree that this mess with my father and the great search for a respectable goddamn wife was my fault. I’m the one who thought we would never get caught. I believed that it was harmless, that the law was just a guideline to be ignored,” Will said. 

Jem gave him a half-smile. “I suppose that neither of us can take all the credit. We both created this particular disaster.” 

“Teamwork,” Will deadpanned. “Can’t burn a parabatai bond to the ground and throw an entire family into disarray all by yourself.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short, you just need practice,” Jem said, echoing his tone.

Will laughed. He leaned back and slouched down in the chair. It was old. Heavy dark wood, dark green upholstery, smelled faintly of dust. The whole of the York Institute smelled faintly of dust. By the Angel, he wanted to leave this damn place. He wanted to take Jem with him and go someplace. Any place. There had to be somewhere where they could just curl up together and forget the world. There had to be some answer that wasn’t a wife or a future no one wanted. 

Jem was smiling properly now. Amused. Tired but so close to happy. 

“You know I love you,” Will said. 

“I do,” he said. “I love you too but you know that doesn’t change anything, right?”

Will nodded. 

He got up and came to sit on the ottoman in front of Jem’s chair. Jem met his gaze and they sat there and stared at each other for a long time. 

Will’s fingers itched to touch him. Just to squeeze his fingers in apology. 

Will reached out and adjusted Jem’s tie. No actual contact. Just fingers on fabric. Jem watched him with wary eyes. This was playing with fire. 

This kind of proximity wasn’t safe. 

It was there. The pull that ran under their broken parabatai bond got stronger the closer they got. The bleed of emotions was the ripples on the surface of the water but the pull was a hidden riptide that wanted to drown them both. Will felt the echo of the pull. The need to be closer. The desire to just wrap himself up in James Carstairs and forget everything else. 

Silver streaked eyes watched him. The pupil ringed in silver that was pushing the brown out of his iris a little at a time. Extraordinary eyes. Every detail of him was extraordinary. 

Jem opened his mouth to speak and Will nearly kissed him. Jem felt the spike of emotion or some echo of intention and saved both of them from making it worse. He pulled away like he had been burned. Jem didn’t say anything. He stared at a spot over Will’s shoulder and drew in a shaky breath. 

Will had been leaning in. He hadn’t done it on purpose. He couldn’t remember getting this close but here he was. He let his hand settle on Jem’s chest for only the briefest of moments before he was standing and walking away. 

He heard Jem exhale hard then the scrape of the chair and the click of the door as Jem left and Will was alone again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved all the comments that were like "this is fun" and "it has romcom vibes" and HAHAH you thought you were safe from the ANGST!! Nope nope nope. That bitter mutual pining thing where two characters want to be together but can't is my favourite brand of angst. 
> 
> *rolls around in the angst*
> 
> I'll come back to the parabatai bond and the pull throughout this story so the problems and functions of it will get clearer over time. I know it's a little confusing here but I could not figure out how to put in a big info dump without losing all my characterization and flow. 
> 
> Here's an explainer I wrote back when I was planning this fic. You can read it if you don't want to wait for it to come up in the course of the story: https://upagainstabookcase.tumblr.com/post/175976732679/would-you-ever-write-jem-and-will-having-to-deal


	4. A Lovely Breakfast

Tessa paused on the stairs and ran through the reasons that this was not a good idea. She would infuriate her uncle, offend her cousin, irritate her great-grandfather. She would get drawn into conversations that she didn’t want to have with people she barely knew. There was the risk of mockery for her ancient dress and the hair she had tried to fix up herself without a maid to help. There would be gluey porridge and weak tea and she could eat those things in her room as easily as she could eat them in the dining room. 

This was a terrible idea. This was an idea that she was going to deeply regret. This was just going to make everyone cranky and angry and her quiet little existence would be made more difficult by it. 

The other voice in her head scoffed at that. Her quiet existence was miserable. Did it matter if the misery had a slightly different flavour for a few days after these people left? She could have a friend for a few days and then once the Herondales were gone and no one was there to judge her uncle for his bad behaviour, well, she would deal with that problem when it came. 

A voice interrupted her resolve and she froze on the stairs. 

"Salvation, Jemmy, I swear," Ella's voice said. 

They were coming down the hall below her and Tessa was still frozen on the landing beneath the portrait of a dead girl who had been raised in her mother's place. Aunt Harriet's sister. Tessa barely remembered Harriet but she liked to imagine that she recognized something in the blonde hair and blue eyes of Adele Starkweather. Elizabeth Morris. The real Elizabeth Morris. The human girl stolen by faeries and left in the hands of the Shadowhunters to be loved and raised and to ultimately die at the ceremony for her first runes. 

A terrible story in a family full of terrible stories. Tessa’s life had been a tragedy before she’d even been born. 

"Ella," Jem said with a sigh. 

"Listen. He's not going to budge. Will keeps stalling and playing games and having rollicking dramatic arguments with him behind closed doors but he's not going to budge. Father wants Will married and won't be dissuaded from it. You won't tell me why though I know you know. Will and Father continue to pretend that there is nothing amiss about this entire accelerated mess of a search for a wife, and I've decided I don't care. Well, perhaps, I do care but as no one will tell me anything, I will keep that to myself," Ella spoke in a low voice but it carried up the stairs. 

Tessa was eavesdropping. 

She didn't move. 

"Melody is atrocious. Tatiana Lightwood would be a better choice, at least she only pretends to be a stupid simpering little git. Melody is genuine. She is genuinely that interested in tarts and bad watercolour flowers. Tati being manipulative is better than that," Ella said and Jem let out a little sound of disapproval at the insult but didn't interrupt. "Father is going to railroad Will into making a proposal because he's quite sick of Will being Will over this.”

“Ella-” he started but she wasn’t finished. 

“I would rather not have to tolerate Melody Starkweather as my goddamn sister in law for the rest of my life. Every Christmas dinner. Every one. She would be there. I'd have to tolerate having nieces and nephews raised on her idiot opinions. Some cute little baby who doesn’t know any better telling me about how warlock heads should be mounted in the living room to remind us of our heritage or something.” 

"Don't hold back, Ell, tell me how you really feel," Jem said with a touch of Will's sarcasm in his voice. 

"Quiet you. You're supposed to be on my side. Will and Melody are a bad match. Will and Tessa is a much better match and you are going to help me convince him of that," Ella said. 

"You want to pair a sullen skittish girl up with Will and then tolerate Will being grumpy and terrible over the railroading for probably a decade afterward? Do you hate her very much?" Jem said. 

"Shy not skittish, be nice, you're the nice one," Ella said and she hit him. Tessa heard the impact and his little laugh. "Her family is foul but she is brilliant. Sharp and clever and pretty. Don’t tell me didn’t notice.”

Another soft sound that Tessa couldn’t quite read. 

“And she’s sharp and clever the way that Will is sharp and clever,” she said. “She isn’t exactly nice but we’re pairing off Will here. Will is only nice to two people in the world: you and his baby sister. She’s exactly what he needs. Will threw out three different obscure poetry allusions last night, stuff I didn't understand, and she had a response for all of it. She is self-taught. That archery performance you caught the end of? Self-taught. She climbed up the exterior wall to get to the training room. Climbed the wall. They told her no and so she just sneaks in and does it anyway. She's not sullen, you take that back." 

Tessa nearly cried. She had overheard a lot of conversations about herself over the years. None of them had been in her defense. The nicest ones were the ones who hadn't actively campaigned against her. She had long associated a restraint from cruelty with kindness. This was a kindness for its own sake completely absent from threat or discussion of it.  
  
"I apologize for judging her too abruptly," Jem said. 

"Good. I'm pairing you off with her on our little park outing. I don't want to offend Melody's claims on Will too early or it will cause a scene. If you are right and she is horrific, we will reevaluate but she isn't and you'll like her. You'll see," Ella said. "And then you'll help me convince Will of that fact regardless of how much he lets his annoyance at Father blind him to everything." 

Tessa took a deep breath. She didn't cry. She knew how to keep that under wraps. She took a step to the left so that the creaky board let out a whine. Ella's bright blonde head appeared around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. She looked Tessa up and down and then frowned at her.

"Good morning! Is that the best dress you have?" she asked. 

As a conversation starter, it threw her off. She looked down at the gown. It was a flattering color, blue and white but it was older than Tessa was. It had bell sleeves and a very round skirt that had gone out of fashion decades before. 

"No, but the best dress I have is almost as old and not fit for breakfast," Tessa said. 

"Come with me,” Ella said coming up the stairs. She paused to point back at Jem who was watching her. “You go find Sophie and send her up here. She hates the servants here anyway so she'll happily leave them to whatever they're doing. We'll be fashionably late but we will be fashionable when we arrive." 

"I don't have a fashionable dress," Tessa admitted. 

"I believe that, look at this thing! It's a cake," Ella said trotting up the stairs to flick some lace on Tessa's skirt. "I - on the other hand - have many fashionable dresses. I am a frivolous and flighty thing who cannot resist a nice fabric. You can wear one of mine, you're only a little taller than me and you've got a better chest but I'm sure we can find something that will work with that." 

"You are not frivolous nor flighty, I'm sure," Tessa said immediately. 

"I appreciate that. My baby sister thinks my interest in fashion is trite and mundane and accuses me of being as bad as Jessamine with my shopping. If it offends you, we shan't use flighty as a descriptor but I do have an excellent wardrobe and I brought enough of it to offend my father when we were packing. Come along," Ella grabbed Tessa's arm and hauled her back up the stairs and off into the guest wing. 

Tessa pulled off her own dress with the maid’s help and checked over her shoulder in the mirror. Her shift covered enough of her back that no one was going to notice the pattern of scars that ran down either side of her spine. A few edges peeked out at the shoulders but if Ella or Sophie noticed them, they didn’t mention it. 

The dress Ella chose for her was dusty rose and gorgeous. Elegant and well-cut. It even fit well. Ella was drawn with sharper edges than Tessa was but they were close enough that a few changes in lacing and a quick adjustment to the bodice and it looked like it had been tailored for her. 

"Yes, I think so," Ella said. "Sophie?"

"She looks lovely, Miss,” Sophie said. 

Then they were headed back downstairs. Arm in arm like they had been friends since they were children. Tessa did not think that Ella's plans to marry her off to anyone would be successful - let alone someone like William Herondale - but it was wonderful to be treated like a friend. She liked being swept along and wrapped up in the chatter. Ella was talking about how Will had recently become interested in the dreary poetry of an American author named Poe. Tessa was defending Annabel Lee as Ella swept her into the dining room. 

She hadn't even realized that she was on the right floor for it. She had paused on the landing to prepare herself for this confrontation and now, she found herself entering the room mid-sentence and barely aware of anyone else. 

"Oh," someone said. 

Ella aggressively pretended not to notice and Tessa met her uncle's alarmed gaze for a moment and then decided that Ella’s was the best philosophy. She smiled at the assembled people around the table and then turned back to Ella to offer a last defense of Poe and his poetry. 

"Knocking, knocking at my door," Ella intoned in a dull flat voice. 

"Wrong poem," Tessa said with a laugh. 

"And the wrong quote for that poem, rapping, tapping, never knocking," Will added. 

"Is that so?" Ella asked him. 

She steered Tessa to sit down on her side of the table, across from her uncle. Melody sat beside him and cast Tessa an almost frightened glance but Tessa ignored her. Melody had positioned herself and her perfect hairstyle directly in front of Will who was now beside her. Ella sat on her other side and leaned past her to argue with Will over verb choices. 

The table had gotten quiet but admitting the strangeness of her appearance would mean admitting that her absence had been intentional. She knew her uncle wouldn’t risk that faux pas.   
  
The Elder Mr. Herondale took the appearance of a strange new young woman in stride with barely a glance up from his plate. Perhaps Ella collected up new friends and brought them to meals regularly, perhaps he had been informed of Tessa’s existence, perhaps he simply didn’t care. 

The breakfast passed almost normally. Sophie brought along another plate to set the extra place. There was enough food for everyone plus a little extra. It was a nice breakfast. It was far nicer than Tessa usually expected from her Grandfather’s table. Aloysius wasn’t present. He rarely was present for breakfast, eating before dawn and then not coming down from his study until after lunch. 

Mr. Herondale accepted Ella's description of her as Melody's cousin who had been feeling unwell but was recovering and ready to rejoin the party. No one else questioned it. They wouldn’t dare. Uncle Reginald shot her stern little looks and Melody looked put out by her presence but they were on their very best behaviour. The Head of the London Institute was sitting at their table and they weren’t going to appear anything but perfectly polite while that was happening. 

Tessa managed an, “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Herondale.” 

Then Ella was pushing the conversation back into the waters she wanted to be in. 

The conversation about poetry persisted despite Melody's lost expression and three attempts from Uncle Reginald to shift the conversation onto Idris gossip or the evils of faeries or really anything but this never-ending conversation about poets and their works. 

That it was a lively debate and Ella actively kept engaging her opinions in made the conversation far easier to participate in than Tessa was used to. Usually, conversations over meals were difficult. Polite conversation with the Shadowhunters who passed through the Institute and obviously had a great distaste for it. Her grandfather’s lectures and monologues. Her Uncle’s diatribes and veiled threats. None of it was easy to fit herself into. 

This wasn’t just easy. It was entertaining and she found herself smiling genuinely. 

Jem claimed to know nothing but what he had picked up by accident from Will. The elder Mr. Herondale was well-read enough to make a few observations but he mostly studied the discussion like he was a tutor evaluating it for form and content. Ella made grand pronouncements about the worth of various poets or works which would throw Will into a defense or an agreement. Tessa agreed with him often enough that he started turning to her when Ella said something ridiculous. He twisted in his chair, spoon still in hand, and looked at Tessa. 

Tessa held up a hand and shook her head before Will could start. Ella was grinning and watching them both.

"No, she's right on that one," Tessa said. 

"She is not. He’s brilliant," Will said. 

"Perhaps but he's hardly someone you would invite to tea," she said. 

"You don't read poetry because you want to invite the author to tea, you read it because it beautiful or interesting or enlightening," Will said. "By that measure, he is a great man." 

"Great poetry, a disaster of a man," Tessa said. 

Will sighed and turned, not for the first time, to make a polite attempt to include Melody in a discussion topic that she knew nothing about. He was nice to Melody and Tessa turned to see what Melody would make of this. Will asked her if she thought that the works of an artist should be considered separately from the behaviour of the artist. Melody launched into a discussion of her own watercolour studies that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Will exchanged a glance with Jem who blinked back blandly like nothing bothered him. 

Now that the conversation was back on the topic of Melody, Uncle Reginald picked up a discussion of her various skills. Melody could play the harp. Melody could paint watercolour studies and preferred landscapes. Melody could speak French and Italian. Melody could cook delicious desserts and made the world's best chocolate tarts. 

Jem shot Will another look. 

Tessa had learned long ago to keep an eye on the silent conversations happening at the table. Reginald was furious that no one had managed to prevent Tessa from being introduced to the guests. That was easy enough to pick up. 

These conversations between Will and Jem were harder to read. She didn't know either of them very well but the looks were significant. They were having a detailed conversation that no one else was privy to.  
  
"I hate French," Will said. 

His father sighed noticeably but not loudly. No one else seemed to notice but he was within Will’s sightline. Will looked at him with one of those eloquent expressions. The dialect between father and son was no more comprehensible than the dialect between the parabatai had been. Whatever the argument was, Will gave in with a little shrug. 

"I love chocolate though," he added. 

Tessa was long finished her last cup of tea and Melody was still talking about chocolate recipes that she knew or had read. Will’s polite question about cake had sparked a new ramble. Tessa ignored her and ran her finger along the saucer. Ella leaned her shoulder into Tessa's and sighed very quietly. 

I'm bored. She's boring. 

It was a simple conversation but Tessa wasn't used to being part of someone’s silent language. She grinned at Ella who shook her head. 

No, she said with that expression, this isn't a good thing.

Tessa looked away and found herself looking at Will who made a face of his own at her. Subtle. Almost a plea like he was asking Tessa to turn the conversation back to something interesting. Melody looked back at him to bat her eyes and ask about his thoughts on strawberries and he tried to pretend that he had been paying attention. 

Ella came to everyone’s rescue, perking up and leaning forward.

"Mel, love, are we still going to go on the little city tour? Didn't you say there was a nice park not so far from here?" Ella asked. 

No one corrected Ella on the nickname. Melody was Melody. Tess and Mel had lasted for about three hours when they were small before Melody's mother had pulled them aside and told them firmly that they were Melody and Theresa and short forms were low class and not to be tolerated. The Herondales were as close to royalty as Nephilim Britain had and even the patriarch called his children by their nicknames. 

Tessa was starting to feel like she had awoken into a dream world where everything was different. Her uncle was being intensely civil. Her grandfather was keeping his mouth shut. Her cousin was suddenly Mel and Tessa herself had found herself with a friend who shared her dresses and offered defense when someone spoke against her. She had found herself at the center of lively discussions of the sort of books she had always been told were a waste of time to read. 

Will included her in the look he gave Ella as Melanie started to explain her plan for the day. It wasn’t easy to understand but he made eye contact with her and she quirked a tiny smile at him in return. She looked away first. He made her uncomfortable. He was pretty as a picture and it was unsettling. 

This might be a dream world but it was a nice one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh, Tessa, you've got a crush on the pretty boy. He looks at you and you get all flustered and weird! 
> 
> I know Jem is a little rude in this chapter but he's still reeling from the night before and in this world he's grown up with the Herondale sisters as though they're a part of his family and he isn't trying to be good. Tessa points out in canon that she never considers how much effort it takes him to be kind because it does, it takes hard work. Even for Jem. He's not putting in that work with Ella in that conversation and the snide remark slips in. I stand by this characterization choice. 
> 
> The response so far to this story has been WONDERFUL. I am so so so grateful to all of you who have left a comment or a kudos or even just read through to the end of a chapter. 
> 
> Thank you. 
> 
> I am having so much fun settling back into these characters. It feels like a long time since I've really written them like this. I love them so much and I hope you do too. 
> 
> <3


	5. A Walk in the Park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got an edit and update on November 8th. Nothing huge, just an extra scene at the end.

Jem Carstairs was extremely polite. He was quiet and watchful and Tessa hadn't seen him smile yet but he was undeniably a calming presence. Ella adored him and Will kept looking to him as though they were having complex conversations with nothing more than glances. Edmund Herondale hadn't looked at him once since breakfast. 

It wouldn't have been so noticeable if Tessa wasn't so aware of both of them. She was watching everyone, worrying about how they were assessing her. 

Edmund had been considering her as the morning progressed. Ella's enthusiasm and the breakfast conversation of books had convinced Tessa that she could handle all the sociability but the carriage ride left her uncomfortable and nervous and Edmund just made it worse. It wasn’t that there was anything cruel in the looks, it was just uncomfortable to be watched by a stranger and know that he was passing some kind of judgment. 

They had split up into two carriages as the party was quite large. Tessa found herself sitting with Edmund and Jem in a smaller carriage that belonged to the Institute. The larger one had been borrowed or rented by Uncle Reginald when they’d arrived and held Melody, her father, Will, and Ella. It was obviously not anyone’s preferred seating plan but Will had stolen Ella when Reginald had announced seating arrangements. 

Jem had called her sullen and a part of her wanted to prove that she wasn’t but he gave no opening for a conversation. He sat quietly, beside her but very close to the other wall and looked out the window at nothing. He and Edmund ignored each other with such polite intensity that it made the entire carriage thrum with awkward energy. 

“I am not quite clear on your parentage, Ms. Starkweather,” Edmund said. 

Which - as far as conversation openers went - was worse than the awkward silence had been. 

“My mother was Uncle Reginald’s cousin,” she said. 

“You’re one of Gloria’s? Wouldn’t that make you a Penhallow?”

Tessa twisted her fingers in her lap and said, “No, Gloria is my great aunt. My mother was Adele. Vincent’s daughter.” 

“I thought she died. I remember the news. She was a little younger than I was but I had no siblings so Granville was always arranging playdates when he had to travel to the other Institutes in Britain. Little blonde thing. Very gentle. Always sitting around doing needlepoint or other girlish things. I was thirteen and far more interested in swords than florals.” 

Tessa hadn’t considered that Edmund knew her family beyond this visit. Of course, he would. He had been raised in the London Institute by Granville Fairchild, the previous head. She rarely thought about the other Adele, the human girl who had been sent to die so a monstrous man could steal away a Shadowhunter girl for his twisted experiments. 

She had been silent too long and Edmund had moved past polite interest into a little frown. Tessa could see more of Ella in him than Will. The frown might have been judgmental. Jem assessing her as quiet and sullen came back to her. But then, the expression might also have been concern for her welfare or worry about offending her. He was not easy for her to read. 

“My mother was taken by faeries and replaced by a mundane girl. The Adele you knew had been born Elizabeth Morris. My mother grew up as Elizabeth. She returned to the Clave after monsters killed her husband and she went looking for answers. She trained after she came back. She raised me here until she died fighting a demon when I was seven. That was when I moved to Idris,” Tessa said. 

None of that was a lie and it made Edmund blink in surprise. 

Jem looked over at her but held his silence. 

Luckily the park wasn’t far from the Institute and they arrived before any follow-up questions could be asked. 

Escaping into the watery morning sunshine was a relief. The park was still quiet, it was midweek and it was far more fashionable to go walking in the park on a Saturday. Melody’s gleefully set out the route and the program she had put together. It was a distraction from worrying about being under so much scrutiny from so many people. 

Jem fell into step with her and quietly pulled her to the back of the group where Edmund couldn't study her and her own family couldn't shoot her little warning glares as though they could threaten her out of existence. He was perfectly polite about it. Graceful and calm. 

"Would you walk with me, Miss. Starkweather?" he asked.

She had his full attention and it was easier to be studied by those soft silver ringed eyes than it was to be studied by Edmund’s blue ones. He kept the conversation to polite empty topics. The weather. The park. Something about a party coming in London. Observations of York. She started to relax as the conversation went on. 

He was trying. Ella had told him to be nice and he was doing an admirable job of it. 

It wasn't as easy as talking to Ella but he was trying so hard to keep the conversation going that Tessa found herself putting in just as much effort instead of just retreating into quiet contemplation. The sullen comment kept climbing up in the back of her mind. 

The conversation lulled as they rounded a pond filled with ducks and up ahead, Will was telling a story about mallard pies and cannibalistic waterfowl. Jem did let a flutter of a smile show as he paused to listen. He watched while Will mimed out pieces of the story and flashed a smile when it got a laugh from his audience. 

When the story was done and he turned back to Tessa, a hint of that smile remained for her and she smiled in answer to it. They fell back a little and followed the others along in silence for a little while before Jem finally made another attempt at conversation. 

"Why do you do it?" he asked. 

"Pardon me?" Tessa frowned at him. 

"Train, despite the opposition. Teaching yourself archery from a book isn't exactly a common pastime for most young ladies," he said. 

Tessa considered that. Considered him. 

He watched her with eyes shot through with silver. There was a ring of silver in his dark brown eyes and the colour was broken by lines that radiated out like spiderweb cracks. It shimmered faintly in the sunlight, as did the silver in his hair. She had thought he was prematurely going gray but that wasn’t it. The colour was metallic. True silver, not just premature gray. Those fractured eyes should have been disturbing but there was a softness in his expression that made him beautiful. He looked away first when he realized she was studying him as much as he was studying her. 

And he was studying her just as carefully.

The question was some sort of experiment like he was a naturalist with an interesting specimen. Ella believed Tessa had a chance of making a match with her brother and had asked Jem to form an opinion on the matter. Another stranger to watch her and ask probing little questions about bloodlines and personality like she was a new horse they were considering buying. 

Tessa shrank from the threat of that opinion for a moment but only a moment. 

To hell with all of this. 

To hell with silver-streaked boys and golden girls and their judgments. 

They could entertain impossibilities all week if they wanted to, but the pair of them weren't going to change anything for her. All their calculating looks and quiet stairwell conversations weren’t going to bring her mother back or change the reality of her parentage or make her family hate her existence any less. Their opinions of her mattered about as much as their opinions on the moon or the frogs. Opinions wouldn’t change anything. 

She waited until she was sure that her voice wouldn't waver with anger or whatever the other emotion bubbling in her chest was and then spoke. 

"I train because I choose my legacy." 

"Is it worth it?" he asked. 

Tessa stopped and took a deep breath before she spoke. He paused with her and waited. She hadn’t meant to stop walking but now that she was standing with both feet on the ground, she did not want to hurry and catch up. The rest of the group moved on without them. 

"There is nothing I will ever do that will change their opinion of me. There is nothing I will ever do that will change my worth in their eyes. So it doesn't matter what I do. I train because I want to. I was born a Shadowhunter. My mother died when I was young and left me with nothing but a family that hates me and a heritage larger than they are. I will likely never be asked to defend the world but if I were called to that battle, I would like to have something to offer that heritage," she said. 

He watched her with very serious eyes before he smiled. Soft, gentle, a bit conspiratorial, like they were in on a secret. He nodded. 

"Besides, it would make my uncle furious. Which is also the only reason I came to breakfast," she said. 

“It worked. He’s still fuming.” 

“Good,” said Tessa.

The soft smile cracked into a bright laugh. He was still laughing as they started up the path after the others. Tessa found herself smiling back. There was something about his laugh that was infectious. She caught both Ella and Will glancing back at them at the sound of that laugh. Ella looked smug and Will a little confused. 

“Your uncle,” Jem started. 

“Don’t,” she said with a little shake of her head. 

He took it as another joke and laughed. 

"Melody is better than he is, you know, she's a sweet person," Tessa said. "Ella doesn't like her much but she truly is a lovely girl." 

"I know," he said. 

Tessa hadn't defended Melody against Ella. Ella had been on a roll and getting a word in edgewise had been difficult. Jem listened more. Tessa felt a less disingenuous with those words said aloud. 

Melody was the daughter who had been given every advantage her parents could find for her. She was a little spoiled and she lived with her head in the clouds but she had been like a sister at one point. When Tessa remembered her time living in her uncle's house in Alicante, mostly she remembered Melody. Melody telling her secrets she had overheard about who was marrying who. Sharing a bag of cherries in the garden beneath a blue sky. Trying and failing to put each others’ hair up like they were fancy ladies at a party. Reading books and sharing favourite parts. They’d slept in the same nursery for years. 

"Ella's a bit judgmental but she is right about one thing. Melody won't be a good match for Will,” Jem said. 

"Why?" 

Tessa looked at him and he avoided her eye as he formulated his answer. He looked out over the pond, silver eyes far away as he considered. The sun shone on his hair and she found herself spellbound by the details of him. He was very pale and very thin but there was so much light in him. He turned back to her and she dropped her gaze, embarrassed to be caught staring. 

"Will is a difficult person," Jem said. "He's stubborn and he has a temper and he'd rather read a book than go to a party. He's charming but under all that charm, he's not really very friendly. He loves deeply and completely but not easily. Your cousin would not appreciate a husband who dislikes parties, argues over breakfast as a form of entertainment, and only agrees to spend social time with a grand total of about four people, two of whom are downworlders." 

Tessa blinked at that last one. 

Jem gave her a little smile but this one wasn't as kind as the others had been. Another experiment. This conversation was filled with tests and pitfalls. Sometimes it would roll along and they would just be chatting and then he’d push, ask a question she wasn’t expecting and remind her that she was being considered like a job applicant. Tessa wished there was a scorecard she could check so she could find out how she was doing. 

“You’re surprised?” Jem asked. 

“Most Nephilim do not keep downworlder company,” she said carefully. 

As if she knew what most Nephilim did. Her social circle was so small that she could hardly be considered an expert on anything relating to the Nephilim. She didn’t even qualify herself. 

A slow tilt of his head. She wasn’t doing well on this test. He was looking for something different. He glanced off a branching path and then back to her but didn't say anything for a long moment. She set her jaw and took a long deep breath before she said anything. She was getting annoyed with this exam that she had neither received an explanation for nor been allowed to study for. 

They walked in silence for a little while. Tessa looked up ahead at the rest of the group, Ella was all smiles and Melody was laughing a charming little laugh that added fuel to the fire of Tessa’s growing annoyance. She managed to affect an air of casual confidence and bubbling joy. 

"I don’t know many Downworlders. I didn't go to the Academy. I'm not allowed to participate in Institute business. I don't get sent out on patrol," Tessa said. "But, I believe in the Accords.”

He nodded. "Will's best friend is Magnus Bane. Some of the few people he takes advice from are a half-fae woman and a ghost."

"And does he take advice from you?”

"I'm not much better in terms of respectability and he only takes my advice about a quarter of the time." 

"I find you very respectable," she said. 

He laughed like she had told a joke and when she frowned at him, he waved her off like it didn't matter at all. But he was smiling all the way to his eyes. The smile was as infectious as the laugh. 

Maybe she had a chance of passing this test after all.

Ella fell back to join them and her expression was all delighted curiosity. Tessa caught just the corner of a look from Will glancing back over his shoulder. Ella had abandoned him to Melody and Uncle Reginald and his father. Tessa would have been glaring too if she’d been left with that company. 

“You two are back here having a grand old time, I wanted to be where the party is,” Ella said. 

“You wanted to get a report on his opinion of me,” Tessa said. 

“That too. She’s lovely isn’t she?” Ella said without missing a beat. She settled herself on Tessa’s other side and took her arm. 

“She is,” Jem agreed and his smile looked genuine. 

“So I passed your little exam?” she asked and braced herself to regret the comment. 

Instead of being offended or accusing her of being overly blunt, they both laughed. Ella leaned in and held Tessa’s arm tightly like they were old friends. Jem looked down a little embarrassed.

“I didn’t mean to-” Jem started. 

“Professor James, harassing young ladies with probing questions.” 

“I was not-” 

“He wasn’t harassing me,” Tessa cut in. Ella laughed and Tessa joined in. Ella’s laughter was contagious. 

“What are the three of you cackling about?” Will called back from up the path. 

Ella pulled them along and back into the main group. Tessa found herself holding onto the place beside Jem. It was easier to manage the bouncing ball of a conversation with so many participants when she had him at her side.

Will fell into step with them and raised his eyebrows at Jem. Another silent conversation that Tessa couldn’t begin to make sense of. Will met her gaze too and flashed her a little smile. It was not quite an invitation to join the silent conversation but something close. She returned the smile and found that it lingered. The group turned around and made their way back towards the carriages again and Tessa found herself enjoying being in the middle of it all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I write TID without including Jessa scenes? NOPE. Nope, I cannot. 
> 
> <3 Thank you for your support!


	6. On Making Choices

The afternoon was dragging. The space between the end of their walk in the park and the start of dinner was a gaping maw of empty time. 

Jem had no idea what to do with himself in this place. He could train but he didn’t want to wear himself out. He knew Will would badger him into the training room after dinner. Will was going to be in a mood by the time he got home. The prospect of bouncing around the training room, hitting each other with practice swords, and flinging insults back and forth was the only thing keeping Jem from losing his mind. 

Reginald had managed to get invitations to some sort of social event but he had shocking only gotten four. So everyone else had to be left at home while Will was dragged along with Melody and their fathers to drink tea and look at ornamental gardens or listen to poetry or something. 

Jem had forgotten the details. Something Will had complained about while half-heartedly accusing Jem of abandoning him in the park. 

“You spent all morning with the Archer Girl and left me to talk to that idiot with his shiny shoes and his simpering offspring.” 

“You’re being mean, again,” Jem said calmly. 

“I cannot stand these people.” 

“So stop playing this game. Stop dragging it out.” 

Will had pushed his hands back through his hair and ground his teeth a little before he snapped, “And do what?”

“Make a decision, William. Stop being a child about this.” 

Then he had stormed out of the room and gone to hide in a quiet corner until Will and the others were gone. Now he was stewing in a bad mood. Maybe he was the one being a child about all this. Maybe they both were. 

Now Jem had an afternoon alone to think about it and that was the last thing he wanted. Jem had been adrift since they’d arrived in York. Caught between what had happened and all the things that might happen next.

They’d been shipwrecked. Jem and Will had been sitting in a lifeboat, bailing out water for months before it had all come apart. Now he was floating in the debris, watching a speck on the horizon. It might bring rescue. It might destroy them both. Maybe it would pass them by entirely and leave them to drown slowly. 

He rubbed his face and stood up. He had found a quiet study and had been sitting there with a book, wishing he had brought his violin. It was back in London and he hadn’t played more than a handful of notes since things had started going so completely wrong. 

That sort of thinking wasn’t going to help him or anyone else. 

He wandered down the hall, both wishing for the distraction of running into someone and hoping he would be left alone. Will and the others were off on the little field trip to drink tea and eat cakes and be wooed. There weren’t many people left in the Institute to run into. Aloysius Starkweather didn’t come out of his private quarters often and that meant the only people he might run into were Tessa or Ella. 

Either of which would have been a pleasant distraction. 

He liked the other Starkweather girl better than he’d expected. Theresa Starkweather was direct and curious and stubborn as hell. Jem also suspected that she didn't like him much. She definitely didn't like her family. She hadn't made eye contact with her uncle more than twice all day and had barely said a word to any of them that wasn't required for politeness. She liked talking to Will but Jem wasn’t sure she actually enjoyed his company either. 

The only person he was sure she did like was Ella. An attachment that Ella heartily returned. They were probably together somewhere. Giggling and talking about weapons and poetry and Will. Ella liked Tessa for Will but Jem didn’t really want to think about the idea of that match actually coming together. 

He didn’t really want to think about any match coming together for Will. 

Another thought to push down and away. 

The York Institute wasn’t as big as London’s but it was winding. The narrow medieval corridors were dark stone and dark wood and Starkweather family emblems on every surface. The portraits were sullen and serious. The tapestries faded and dull and even the familiar scenes of Raziel rising from the lake seemed sad in a place like this. 

Jem rounded a corner and bumped straight into a ball of light. Ella was carrying a witchlight turned all the way up even though it was two in the afternoon. Her smile when she saw him was sunny enough that it pushed back his morbid thoughts. 

“Just who I wanted to see,” she said. 

“Because you’re a terrible gossip and hoping I have something good for you,” he said. 

“Do you?”

Jem paused for a moment but Tessa had said it candidly to Edmund of all people so it couldn’t be a secret. “Her mother died when she was young. The entire story is horrible-” 

“Kidnapped by faeries, swapped out for a changeling human child who died on her first runing. Can you imagine?” 

“We were all told the stories of what happens if you’re unprepared for your first rune. My parents used to threaten me with it when I was being lazy about my studies. Burning skin and pain so intense that it will make you pass out. Angelic power that will burn up your mind before you die horribly.”

“But an eleven-year-old human girl. At least you and I stood a chance of training properly and living through our first rune. Melody made it sound like a big family secret and suggested that I not bring it up with Tessa in case it makes her uncomfortable.” 

“Tessa seemed fine with it. The part she conspicuously left out was why she moved from Idris to this place. She won’t talk about her uncle at all. I wonder if that failed runing is why she never got her first runes?” 

“But the girl who died isn’t her mother. Her mother was a Shadowhunter.” 

“I’d say you should ask her but I don’t think it’s something she would talk about.” 

“What does she talk about?”

“Duty, legacy, Will.” 

“Hm,” Ella said tilting her head. 

“What is that hm?”

“Those are also your favourite topics of conversation.” 

Jem laughed. 

“No. Shush. Here I am, working out how to go about marrying her off to my brother and perhaps I am overlooking the possibility of marrying her off to you.” 

“It is not your job to marry me off to anyone.” 

“Nonsense. None of you people seem capable of marrying yourselves off. You need the help.” 

“You are the pot calling the kettle black here. You are as unattached as the rest of us. Besides, I’m going to be dead by 30, Ella. No one deserves marrying into that.” 

Ella hugged his arm and rested her head on his shoulder for a moment. 

The rest of Will’s family liked to talk about the potential for a cure. Cecily and Linette both held out hope that there was something they were missing and they’d figure it all tidily. Edmund was more rational about the entire thing but saw acceptance as a sort of giving up which he didn’t condone on any topic. Ella just let it be. She was one of the few people that Jem could say things like that to because she was one of the few people who didn’t take his illness as a personal offense. 

“But you like her.” 

“Her?”

“Tessa. Melody’s cousin. Tall, gray eyes, round cheeks, very pretty when you can startle a smile out of her. That her.” 

"She is not sullen. I was wrong. You were right," Jem said.

"Carstairs," Ella whined theatrically, "Give me something to work with here." 

"I think her family has treated her abominably," he said. 

"I'm looking for information I don't know. Something I can use," Ella said. 

“She’s not a weapon for you to use against your brother,” Jem said. Ella stuck out her tongue at him and then pointedly stared until he started talking. 

"She's smart and she is very pretty. She's determined to the point of being stubborn. If you're going to try and marry her off to Will, I think your greater challenge won't be convincing him to make an offer but convincing her to accept him. He hasn’t exactly been ingratiating and politics and social standing don’t interest her."

"They spent all of breakfast flirting." 

"They spent all of breakfast talking books. Will can talk books with a brick wall. Will has had similar arguments about Chaucer with the librarian at the academy who was seventy years old. Will talking books isn't Will being interested and I suspect that Miss Starkweather is just as prone to an intellectual argument for its own sake." 

"That's not disqualifying." 

"I didn't say it was," Jem said. 

Ella had dragged him out of the dark halls and into the overgrown courtyard in the center of the Institute. That had far too many windows to allow for much covert conversation so they’d gone back into the gloom. She finally settled on the large room that was half library, half meeting room. At least here, they'd be able to see anyone coming before they were overheard trying to sabotage Reginald Starkweather's dreams of socially advantageous matrimony. 

"She was the one that the letter was originally about," Ella said. 

"I agree but that is neither here nor there Ell," Jem said. “What her great-grandfather wants for her and what she wants for herself do not exist on the same plane of existence. That family wants her to be silent and invisible and she wants to fight demons and argue books and travel the world. They can write all the letters in the world and it won’t make her do what she’s told.”

Ella smiled like that was the highest compliment she’d ever heard. Maybe it was.

After the decision to find Will a wife had been made, a day that Jem chose not to think about too closely, Edmund had started making a few suggestions about introductions. The marriage plan had been decided on early and Will had hated it from the first suggestion. 

There were lots of girls in London. Most of them were people Will already knew and had immediately rejected as possibilities for any number of reasons. Will suddenly despised every woman whose acquaintance he had ever made. He refused the suggestions. He started complaining about parties that he otherwise would have attended and enjoyed. 

It was all stalling tactics. 

Transparently. Obnoxiously. 

Some matches were terrible on their face. Will and Tatiana Lightwood would have been an excellent political match but they would have torn each other apart before they even got to the ceremony. Others were perfectly reasonable suggestions that Will had refused out of hand or for flagrantly made-up reasons. 

His father’s favourite was the family's Mayburn’s eldest daughter. Louisa Mayburn could keep up with Will intellectually and her younger sister was a close friend of Cecily so the families knew each other well. Ella had campaigned for Georgia Montcalm. She was one of the kindest people Jem had ever met and her family had lived at the Institute for a while when she was a child so Will and Ella had known her since nearly the cradle. Either of them would have been excellent contenders. Will could have made some special invitations. There could have been some dancing and quiet conversation. Everyone knew Louisa already liked him. Georgia probably could have been sold on the prospect of marrying into the Herondale family even if she didn’t have quite as strong an attachment to Will himself. 

But no. 

Everyone was a no.

Will was working on drawing out the entire process until his father caved. It seemed possible. His father had caved to his obstruction tactics before. They’d gotten out of a posting to Cornwall because Will had just refused to go. When Will was little he’d won the battle to be sent to the Academy instead of training with his sisters at home in London. Will had been raised like a little prince. Will was used to getting his own way if he dragged his feet long enough. 

It wasn’t going to work this time. 

Will hadn’t made his peace with that but Jem had. 

This was going to happen and people had noticed. That the Herondales were looking for a suitable match for their son hadn’t been a secret that kept well. About a week into Will’s ridiculous behaviour and attending far too many parties and social events, a letter had come from York suggesting an introduction.

The letter had suggested that Aloysius’s great-granddaughter might be a good match but warned that she was bookish and hadn’t spent much time in society. In a spidery and unsteady hand, the letter had declared her clever and likable and pretty. Will had jumped on the invitation because traveling up to York gave him a few more days of stalling. 

“Do you think Will can be convinced to make a proposal?” Jem asked after they’d been sitting in silence too long. He was lost in his own thoughts. “If he won’t take Louisa to tea, why does anyone think he’ll suddenly marry Melody or Tessa or whoever else they find to dangle in front of him.” 

“You would know better than me,” Ella said. 

“You’re his sister.” 

“You’re his Jem.” 

Jem smiled at that. In spite of himself. In spite of the little stab of emotion somewhere in his heart at hearing someone else say that. 

His Jem. 

“Are you ever going to tell me?” Ella asked. 

“About what?”

“About why we are in the dreariest Institute in the Clave, in the dreariest city in the United Kingdom? About why we are measuring the relative worth of Starkweathers? Don’t try and lie about whether or not you know, you always know. You know secrets about Will that Will doesn’t know.” 

Jem smiled. 

“Are you going to tell me? What did he do to deserve this? He didn’t get someone pregnant, Father wouldn’t have him marrying someone else if there were illegitimate children involved. He’s not being rushed into a particular marriage. Just any marriage. Truly. Any marriage. No one seems to care much as long as she has a pulse. Father doesn’t like these people. Mother will like them even less. I don’t understand why either of them lets this disaster drag on.” 

She stared him down and he just shook his head. Ella could wheedle her way into an answer from just about anyone but Jem had known her too long for her tricks to work. Oh, the first summer he had come to stay with the Herondales, Will’s older sister had completely charmed him but he’d learned better since. 

“I’m not going to tell you,” Jem said. 

“So there is something to be told?”

“Of course there is, Ell. Look at this mess. There’s a reason but it’s not my reason to share,” he lied. “If Will wanted the details known, he would share them.” 

“Has he done something ridiculous like fallen in love with Magnus Bane?”

“Magnus has more taste and sense than that,” Jem said. 

Ella laughed. “Am I close?”

“What about you, when are you getting married?” Jem said in the sweetest voice he could conjure up. Ella knew how to play him. Ella seemed to know how to play everyone. She was going to badger him into accidentally saying something he didn’t want to say unless he stopped this conversation in its tracks. 

“When I find someone worth marrying,” she said primly. 

“Ella Herondale, you are the most beautiful woman in London. You could have your pick,” he said. 

“I haven’t found one worth picking.” 

“Really? There’s no one on your wish list?”

Ella went quiet. She sat in the light of the window and fiddled with a piece of her hair as she stared at nothing. She was just as gloriously beautiful as Will was. The colours were different but they had the same nose and the same strong cheekbones. Ella’s chin was pointier and her lips a little narrower but the details suited her. The arched eyebrows and high forehead and all that golden yellow hair turned heads wherever she went. 

Ella glanced at the door like she was thinking about running away from this conversation and Jem was more than ready to let it drop when she turned back to him. 

“I think it would be better to be mundane sometimes,” Ella said. “They can get divorced or poison their husbands and not be stuck with a marriage rune binding them to someone they never really wanted in the first place. Look at Melody, she doesn’t want Will. She wants Idris parties and fancy dinners and high society but here she is, firmly believing that he’ll change for her. She’s blind or stupid. They’d be trapped with each other for the rest of their lives, tied together. It isn’t a decision that I will make lightly.” 

“Do you think they considered that when they designed them? Marriage runes?”

“They’re a gift from the angel,” Ella drawled in a too high, too sarcastic voice that made Jem explode with laughter. 

Ella laughed but then shook her head. 

“Maybe angels don’t have failed marriages. Maybe angels don’t have terrible husbands. Do you think angels understand how human hearts work or were they just pulling strings when they created that one? Ah yes, I shall give the little monkey people the power to control each other's hearts.”

“Monkey people?” 

“You should keep up with Mundane science. It’s very interesting. We likely share ancestry with monkeys and apes. Some ancient ancestor that we all developed from. It’s fascinating. And they all survived with marriage runes.” 

“Marriage runes don’t control hearts. It’s not a curse. It’s a connection,” Jem said. 

“I know,” Ella said. 

“I think it’s a nice idea,” Jem said. “A rune to unite two hearts, to create a bond between people who love each other.” 

“You would say that.” 

“Would I?” Jem asked. 

“You and Will became parabatai before you were old enough to shave. You made a commitment that will last a lifetime when you were children. Don’t you worry about getting it wrong? About waking up one day and regretting those runes and that circle of fire and all that nonsense about whither thou goest?” 

“No.” 

“No?” she turned to him, skeptical. 

“I chose Will. Not just that one time. Every time since then. I’m not still here because of the rune. I’m still here because I choose to be. I don’t regret that commitment.”

“You got lucky.” 

Jem smiled at that. He had. Not in everything but with Will, he had gotten very lucky. He’d found a missing piece of his soul sitting on a bench at the edge of a training room. It had been his third day in Idris and he was regretting leaving China. The food, the dormitories, the regimented approach to training, the weird looks he got from people who all seemed to know each other. Then he’d sat down beside Will and the world had fallen into place. Not all at once but it started from that first meeting. 

“The idea of making a bond like that, heart to heart, soul to soul, mind to mind, worries me,” Ella said. 

“A mind to mind bond is wildly illegal and probably should worry you,” Jem said. 

“Why is it better when it’s your heart and soul?” 

Jem didn’t answer that. Since they’d blown open their parabatai bond, there had been moments when Will’s thoughts had bled through the barrier between them. There had been moments when Jem wasn’t sure if a thought truly belonged to him or not. That terrified him. Being aware of Will’s emotions, being annoyed because Will was annoyed or happy because Will was happy was manageable but he needed his thoughts to be his own. He didn’t have the words to explain that to Ella. 

“Maybe hearts are meant to be shared.” 

Ella made a fake gag and mimed vomiting. 

“Stop,” Jem laughed. “One day you’ll find someone worth choosing.”

Ella nodded. “What about Will?”

“Will is a big boy and can make his own decisions.” 

“Will is my baby brother and I worry about him. I worry about him being forced into this. He’s a hopeless romantic. He is poetry and flowers and disgusting gestures of affection. He deserves to marry for love. He’s going to make a bad decision because he’s a prideful little brat. He’s going to destroy his own heart and our father is going to let him to satisfy this ridiculous agenda he has. I am worried about him.” 

Jem reached out and Ella took his hand. He squeezed her fingers. “So am I.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ella reads Charles Darwin and doesn't have anyone to argue about it with and I almost lost this entire chapter to that tangent. 
> 
> Hi. Am still here. 
> 
> Thank you to jjcarstairs for giving this a read through to make sure it made sense.


	7. Declarations at the Tea Salon

The tea salon was frilly but it promised to have cake as well as tea and Will didn’t hate florals so much that he couldn’t appreciate cake. The florals were making a run at overpowering the baked goods. The tablecloths were lace woven in the pattern of roses. There were vases of flowers as centerpieces. There were flowers on the wallpaper and the china cups. Ladies with flowers on their hats moved among the tables, chatting with their friends. 

The spot was popular among the York Shadowhunters though it was utterly mundane. The presence of other Shadowhunters didn’t do anything to ease Will’s sense of being out of place. Even his black jacket felt too stark in this pastel place. He was a warrior. If he couldn’t be a warrior, he would have chosen to be a scholar. He’d carefully built himself a world of books and blades and close friends. He was not intended for idle chatter among flowers and pretty people. 

He could be charming. He just didn’t want to be.

Melody had seen a friend and been drawn away so they could whisper and look his way with coy little smiles. Ruffles and florals and little old ladies in oversized hats, all that he could deal with. Being the subject of whispers and furtive glances, he could not. He slipped out into the hall where he couldn’t see Melody talking about him. 

It was almost peaceful for a few minutes before he was interrupted by a different Starkweather. 

Reginald Starkweather traveled in such a cloud of pipe smoke and cologne that Will smelled him coming rather than heard him. It was a scent that promised expensive cognacs and plush sitting rooms and pompous conversation. Will held out on turning around. 

“Good afternoon, Master William,” he said. 

Will did not say, “I am 24 and not a child.” Instead, he said: “Hello, Sir,” he said with just a touch of sarcasm on the sir. Just a bit. 

Mr. Starkweather was dressed in a perfectly tailored suit. He was wearing charcoal gray which didn’t help him fit into the florals and lace any better than Will’s black did but he’d tucked a flower into a buttonhole. His hair was a pale brown starting to go gray at the temples and he brushed it back far too severely for his face.

Will glanced down just to check and yes, he still had on those stupid boots. 

It was an affectation in Idris these past few years to wear heavy leather boots to social gatherings. Will had a similar pair but he kept his in a box with his gear. They were hand made and they had taken him nearly two years to break in exactly the way he liked them. He could run in them and keep his footing even when tottering on rooftops in the pouring rain. They were boots for battle but Reginald's were tidy and neat and didn't have a scuff mark on them. They were polished like a gentleman's walking shoes. 

Will wondered when this man had last been sent out on a hunt or even a patrol. He wasn't old enough to be retired but he was posted to Idris and had a job at the Gard. He was a secretary of weaponry or military finances or some such thing. He was probably the person who had to approve the budgets for those handmade boots for people who would actually wear them into battle. 

"I apologize for my relative’s intrusion yesterday," Reginald said. 

Will blinked slowly and took a moment to reorder his thoughts. Relative. The archer girl who liked Tennyson. Tessa. Will had been pushing thoughts of her to the side all day. She made everything about the Starkweather family more complex. If it were a novel, the drama would be fascinating but in real life, it left Will deeply worried about a girl he barely knew. 

"Her upbringing is unfortunate and she is unrefined and more than a little stubborn despite our best efforts," Reginald was saying. 

Their best efforts. 

Their best efforts included locking her up in her rooms so often that she had learned to climb the walls to get out. Their best efforts were enough to make Will wonder if Charlotte Branwell had the pull needed to call in an investigation from the Inquisitor's office. He had known Charlotte all his life and she had gone to work for the Inquisitor as a prosecutor. He wasn't sure if it was illegal to lock away a family member but it was certainly immoral enough to be worth dragging the family name through the mud. 

Reginald didn't need Will to participate in his pronouncements about Tessa. He was still chattering away in grave tones like it was a tragic secret and Will was a trusted confidante.

"-Being brought up here with Aloysius after all. The old man is an upstanding and respectable pillar of society but he's not the best source of social graces. Her parentage hasn't done her any favours either." 

"Her parentage?" Will asked. 

He had been given an absolutely thrilling tour of the family tree by Melody on his first day in York. She had told him all about illustrious cousins and famous grandparents and beautiful aunts. Theresa hadn't been mentioned and Will wasn't sure how she fit into the family tree at all. Melody had an aunt and uncle but Will had gone to school with her cousin Bartholomew and was relatively certain that neither he nor his parents were smart enough to be hiding an entire sister under the rug somewhere and Tessa had mentioned a dead mother. 

"Her mother wasn't raised right. She grew up away from the Clave. It was-" Reginald started. 

Will's patience had been skating ever-thinning ice since the incident that had involved both Jem and his father and set this mess off. York and the Starkweathers and his father were all testing it with their very existence. Any hope of rebuilding that patience had been conspicuously left at home. No Jem to calm him down. No Ella to amuse him. No Archer Girl to distract him. 

He tried. Briefly. Truly. He tried to get it back in check all on his own but his temper snapped through the long slow breath he tried to take in that just smelled like flowers and pipe smoke. Every terrible comment and bloody trophy in that spoils room had built up to it but none of them had knocked him over the edge. It was an innocuous comment with loaded implications that had him squaring his shoulders and looking Reginald direct in the eye. 

"My mother is an ascendant. I would like to know what about being raised outside the Clave is tragic?”

There was a rush of apologies and assurances about how that wasn’t what he meant at all and Will got a hold of his temper again, shoved it back under that cracked layer of ice, and hoped it would all hold. 

He escaped the possibility of the conversation continuing because his father had found them and now they all had to make polite word-like noises at one another.

Will’s father was a good fighter and a mediocre politician. He was just as tightly wound as Will was but he had more practice and was better at holding his tongue. He smiled and chatted and said all the right kinds of nothing to Reginald while they waited for Melody to finish her conversation. Reginald finally went over to collect her so that they could go find their table. 

Will turned on his father rather than follow Reginald into the main room. 

“Do you really want me to marry into that family? Are you hoping that I’ll invite you to every dinner party and the families can become close friends? Generations from now they’ll speak of how the Starkweathers and the Herondales have always been allies?” Will said. 

“William,” his father said in the sharp voice that heralded a fight. Will wanted to have it. He wanted an excuse to go outside and find a quiet corner away from all these disgustingly polite people and yell insults at each other for a little while. He was needling for a fight the way he usually only did with old school rivals like Gabriel Lightwood. He had become the kind of person who started petty fights with his father. He didn’t like it but he didn’t stop. 

Thankfully, his father did not rise to the bait. 

“William,” he said again. He paused to rub the bridge of his nose with his thumb then continued calmly, “What I want is that you live long enough to have the grave misfortune of raising children as stupid and headstrong as you are.” 

“Passing on the blessing,” Will said. 

“All three of you are the bane of my existence. Daily,” Edmund said with a perfectly flat expression. Will cracked a smile despite his anger. It was said in the kind of teasing tone that his father had used before all this had gone wrong.

“Go find your seat and be charming,” Edmund said. 

“What if I don’t want to be charming?”

“Then go ask the argumentative one to marry you,” Edmund said and then walked away from Will. “Or go back to London and ask Louisa or god help us all, Tatiana. But you will make a decision on this.” 

Will took in a long slow breath. 

“You will make a decision because it will save your life. I am about to lose one son to a slow creeping illness that will destroy him by inches,” Edmund held up a hand. “I watched that boy grow. I retaught him his footwork after the Academy tried to teach you fencing of all the useless swordsmanship styles. I care for him as though he were one of my own.” 

Will held his tongue. 

“Jem’s illness is a tragedy. He deserved the future he worked for. He deserved the life he was promised. He deserves things that he will never have a chance at. He is too young and it isn’t right but it is happening.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with this,” Will said. 

“I cannot save him,” Edmund said. “None of us can. We have done the research. We have done the work. We have done the tests. We cannot save him.” 

Will looked anywhere but at his father. 

“But we can save you,” Edmund said. “You took a time-honored Herondale tradition of falling ass over teakettle in love with the wrong damn person and tied your soul to a sinking ship. If you do nothing, when he dies, you will too.” 

Will stood there like a child getting scolded. He didn’t have any words. 

“If I could save you both, I would. If there were some solution that could roll back what you did, I would help you do it. But there isn’t.”

“Maybe-” Will started. This was the closest they had ever come to having a conversation about this that wasn’t just edicts and anger. His father looked at him with bright blue eyes that were softer than they’d been in weeks. Will’s heart was in his throat and his head hadn’t caught up. 

“There are options but they’re all worse than this and you know it. You know that we will not leave you to die together like some goddamn melodramatic bit of poetry.”

“You think I don't understand the stakes here?"

“Evidently not, as you continue to treat this as a battle of wills between you and me. This is not about me giving orders. This is about your lives. What are the options? We could send you to Idris to be separated, to have the runes stripped and the parabatai bond broken. Do you really think he’s strong enough for that? Now? Would it be a kindness to take that road? It would kill him before the ceremony was over.”

“Father,” Will started. 

“That wasn’t a threat. I will not make that call. I would not hurt him more than he has been hurt. But that leaves us with one option. That leaves us with this plan. Pick a girl William, one you can tolerate for the next fifty years. Get a marriage rune to rebalance your heart and soul. Take the years you have left with Jem and find a way to live with it. But live with it. I want you to live.”

“Live long enough that I can meet my own stubborn, asshole children who will fall ass over tea kettle in love with all the wrong people?” Will asked. 

“Dream big. Perhaps your grandchildren will be just as much a blight on your nerves.” 

Will smiled but it wasn’t really happy. His father squeezed his shoulder. 

“I’m going to go pretend to be surprised that Reginald has sat us on the other side of the room so you can woo his daughter.” 

Will rearranged his thoughts. Pushed more things down into the depths of his mind to be dealt with later. He straightened his jacket and caught a look at himself in the mirror. He looked as unsettled as he felt. He smiled at himself and shook his head once more. He almost looked normal by the time he turned and walked back in to find a chair. 

Will was still thinking about that comment when he sat down with Melody. His father was right. Seating had been arranged just so and they were seated at a table with a handful of people that Will vaguely remembered from meetings and events at the Institute. A school friend’s mother. The wife of a man Will had been on a team with for a few months last year. These were people obviously in on the plot to marry the two little lovebirds off. 

Melody was talking poetry. It had worked for Tessa yesterday and now she was trying to use the same tactic. It felt rehearsed. Calculated. It was all so polished and Will wondered who the real Melody Starkweather was. 

“Tell me something,” Will said in a low voice. He interrupted her mid-recitation. The ladies at the table would be able to hear it but he still dropped his voice so they would pretend they didn’t. 

“Tell you what?” she asked with a smile, leaning in. 

“Something you wouldn’t say if your father was closer.” 

A giggle. 

Was he flirting? Damn. That did sound like flirting now that he played it back in his head. 

“Your father is a schemer. What would he not want you to say?”

Her eyes went a little wide and hurt. She cast around, picked up her napkin, put it back. Didn’t look at him. Damn it. Will had offended her. He had expected her to bite back. 

No. 

He had expected Tessa to bite back but this wasn’t Tessa. 

“Perhaps, I am projecting. My father is a schemer. It’s good for tactics. He’s an impressive Shadowhunter on the battlefield and does well as the general behind the Institute desk but it’s all a little exhausting when it comes to introductions and courting and this. I’d rather marry for love than politics and family connection.” 

Not that he would get that chance. 

“Oh yes,” Melody said, her previous upset forgotten, “There is no greater endeavour than love.” 

Damn it again. 

Will hadn’t meant to make that sound so much like an invitation. He should have stuck to insulting her father. 

He was leading her on. He was drawing this out as part of some push and pull with his father. Drawing it out it wasn’t going to hurt anyone as much as it was going to hurt Melody. 

As the course finished, they had both gone quiet. Will pretended to listen to the ladies across the table have their pointed conversation about nieces and nephews who were lucky in love. 

“Do you want to take a walk into the garden?” he asked. 

She shot him a look that he couldn’t read and then nodded. 

They were well within view of everyone and Will did not want anyone’s father around for this so they just slipped out the door and took a turn around the fountain in the courtyard. It wasn't inappropriate to be alone together if the whole party could see them. The earlier rain had let up and though the clouds remained to be out of doors was more than tolerable. 

Will sighed, “Miss Starkweather.” 

“Yes,” she said. 

There were nerves in her voice and he felt shockingly guilty. He did not turn to look at her. 

“I worry that we have had some miscommunication greatly increased by our fathers,” he said. 

She exhaled. Audibly. Will still didn’t look at her. 

“I am under some pressure to find a suitable wife and you match all the requirements and are a lovely and talented young woman,” he managed to get out before his nerves failed him. He did not swear out loud but he paused to swear inside his head. He did not want to upset her. He would rather just slip away in the night on a train and vanish from society forever. 

“But I am not able to be the sort of husband you need and I think dragging this out as though it were something it isn’t, is unfair and disrespectful. I am glad that we have met and I want you to be happy and I don’t think either of us could be happy if we were married.” 

He finally turned and looked at her directly. 

“Thank the Angel,” she said. 

“What?” Will blurted out. 

“You don’t want to marry me?”

“I- um- No but-” 

She interrupted him, putting a hand on his arm and using her fan to wave away his words.

“I have never been so relieved to hear a piece of news. You’re lovely. Of course. Very handsome and intelligent. I’m sure that you would be a perfect husband. It’s just that I have a sweetheart who has not proposed officially because he doesn’t have great connections. He’s a Wayland but not the right branch of the Waylands if you know what I mean,” she said. 

Will let out a half-laugh. He had no idea what that meant. Not really but Melody was still speaking. 

“Now, when I go home, slighted and so heartbroken over losing such an excellent match with such an illustrious family,” she let the sarcasm out on the words excellent and illustrious, and for the first time since they’d been introduced, Will found himself liking Melody Starkweather. “There can be a few weeks of crying and mooning about to make sure that my parents feel thoroughly sorry for me. Then I’ll go out to a couple of parties and when I bring home Michael, oh, it will be such a relief and it won’t matter so much that he is such a distant cousin of the Inquisitor. He’ll make a proposal and I’ll accept and my parents will be happy about it.” 

“Well,” Will said. He was thoroughly unbalanced and just sort of stared at Melody as she talked. “That works out.” 

“I was rather hoping you’d be mean or at least public about the rejection, to really sell it,” she said. 

“We could stage something. Make a show of it. Oh! You could slap me,” Will said with a smile. 

“Excuse me?” she said. 

“They’re watching us, right now,” he said. 

“I am not going to slap you,” she said. She was offended but he was so relieved to have this whole mess behind him that he didn’t care. 

“Should I say something to deserve it?” he said. 

“Pardon?”

“Should we go back inside and enjoy the desert?” he said instead. 

There was a moment where Melody stood there and frowned at him as though she had never heard a joke in her life. It was definitely a good thing that they weren’t getting married. She glanced back towards the window and the other people walking through the flowers. 

“Do you think I need to slap you?” she said. “Should I cry?”

“You should at least look upset if you’re going to try and convince people that this was a match that you wanted to make happen,” Will said. “Not sniffling. We want to project an air of disappointed dignity but sad and downcast at the very least. You’ll have to put on a bit of show.”

"Oh, maybe I should wait and practice a bit in front of a mirror." 

"Do you need help with rehearsals? Ella is a master of manipulating our father into giving her anything she dreams of. I can send her to you to give advice." 

“Do you all have experience with this?” Melody asked. 

“Failed attempts to marry me off? Yes. But I have been failing pretty consistently to turn that to my advantage with my parents.” 

“You’re in love, that’s what that little speech at the table was about,” Melody said considering him like she was seeing him for the first time. “I’m sure you can convince them. Your mother ascended for love, did she not? Left behind lands and a mundane title. You must be able to convince them that rank and society aren’t the only considerations in marriage.” 

Will smiled. “Perhaps.” 

“I was going to suggest that you continue whatever attachment you have formed with my cousin. She is kind and clever and you shouldn’t let her shyness overpower that. Though, if you are already spoken for, I shall leave the topic entirely.”

“Thank you,” he said. 

Melody put her hand on his arm and squeezed. She said, “Have hope. If there is a way through this for me, I am sure there is a way through for you. If it is love, true love, don’t abandon it.”


	8. What This Family Deserves

The Herondales were big loud people who were always around. They filled up the halls of the Institute in a way other visitors didn't. Will and Melody were back from their little courting expedition and he was sprawled out in a chair in the library the last she had seen him. Ella and Jem were in the training room upstairs and Edmund had sprawled a ledger book out on the dining room table so he could lay out all his charts and tables of expenses while he did calculations. Uncle Reginald and Melody were eclipsed by them all and Great-Grandfather Aloysius had retreated farther into his study except for dinner time. The Herondales' party had taken over the entire house.

Tessa had stopped being wary. 

There was always someone around and that kept all the Starkweathers on their best behaviour which meant she could walk the halls with impunity. She could strike up conversations and sit in rooms like she was a welcome member of the family. People smiled to see her and asked for her input. 

But it was an illusion.

The truth came crashing back down with a single word as she walked towards her room to go get ready for dinner. 

"Girl." 

Tessa stopped in the hall and then slowly turned. 

Her uncle stood at the doorway to one of the studies that lined the second-floor corridor. Some were offices and others were storage spaces and the room with the Insitute's archives was at the far end of the hall. It wasn't a space that visitors found much reason to spend time in. It was a dark stone hall with dark wood doors. Even the tapestries were done in such dark colours that they faded into the walls. The witchlights were turned down during the day but the window on the stairs didn't do much to cast light down the corridor. 

Her uncle stood in a shaft of late afternoon light from the room he had been working in. Reginald was shorter than she was now. That was new. The last time she'd seen him, she had only been about fourteen. That meeting had been in passing at an event in the Gard. Melody had said hello and her uncle had made a comment to Aloysius that maybe it would be better if Tessa didn't spend time in Idris. She hadn't heard it but her Great-Grandfather had complained about it on the way home. He had complained that Uncle Reginald thought he had any right to dictate what he did. That hallway, outside that little get-together, was the last time she'd seen Uncle Reginald before they'd barged into the York Institute and turned everything on its head.

She hadn’t been alone in a room with him since that day. 

She didn’t put any more details to the memory. 

Just that day. 

Now, he stood with his arms crossed and his face set. 

At breakfast that morning, while Tessa was wrapped up in conversation with Will and Ella, Reginald Starkweather had looked normal. Just another man in his fifties. Thickset. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A beard and a pair of spectacles he usually kept folded in his pocket. A voyance rune and a well-cut set of clothes that had been chosen to look expensive without looking ostentatious. Just any other visiting Shadowhunter.

Standing in that shaft of light in that shadowy hallway, he looked like the nightmare that had woken Tessa for years after her failed first runing ceremony. In the dream, he was bigger than her, stronger than her just like he'd been when she was a child. She wasn't a child anymore and that memory, that nightmare rising up in her mind, brought a rush of fear.

"Come here." 

Tessa considered turning and walking away but time had sharpened her childhood fears into anger. In some other world, she had been allowed to attend those socials and mixers for Shadowhunter children. In some other world, she'd had friends like Ella Herondale to share glances with and whisper inside jokes to at dinner parties. In some other world, she'd grown up with a family. 

She walked back towards him with her spine prickling but her head held high. This bastard. 

"Yes, Uncle?" she said and her voice was tight. 

He stepped back and she hesitated to step through the door. Talking to him was one thing. Being alone behind closed doors was another. 

He grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward into the study. She yelped as the door slammed shut. He let go of her with a little shove that pushed her back into the room. She took two steps back to put space between them and bumped into the desk. 

"We suffer your existence, you little half-breed monster," he said as an opening to the conversation. 

She opened her mouth once and then stopped. 

What was she scared of, really?

For a very long time, her greatest fear had been that he would give that secret away. She had been afraid that he would tell everyone that she was a little half-breed monster and they'd all hate her as much as he did. The part she'd missed as a child was that doing that meant admitting that there was something wrong with the family tree. Uncle Reginald cared about pedigree and connections. He cared about images and appearances. 

He needed that secret kept more than she did. 

What else was he going to do? He couldn't hit her. He couldn't risk an injury that the Herondales would see. He certainly couldn't murder her and bury her out behind the stable. The worst he could do was insult her and he'd been insulting her since she was a child. It hurt but it wouldn't leave any new scars. 

"This is my home, you needn't suffer unnecessarily, go back to Alicante," she said. 

Tessa pressed her lips together into a line and sat down on the edge of the desk. Rude. It was rude and childish. She swung her feet, letting her heels drum against the wood. Nervous energy. She watched him. Waited for him to make whatever threat he needed to make. 

Her uncle watched her with his eyes narrowed and his hands curled into fists. The ghost of the nightmare hung in the back of her mind but in front of her was just a man. He looked at her like he hated her and her back prickled. She could feel the edges of that old scar and wondered if it was just her imagination. 

His hate wasn't new. None of this was new. 

"You will not ruin this for Melody. You have ruined enough things in her life." 

"Ruined enough things? What exactly did I ruin?" Tessa raised her eyebrows. "Because the runes didn't take? I ruined her first runing ceremony because I had the audacity to be something other than normal?"

"You-"

"You are the one who canceled the party to drag me down to the Silent City like a science experiment instead of a child. You could have stayed and celebrated," Tessa said standing now. Taller than him and when she took a step forward, he took one back. 

That was new. Even if he wanted to risk ruin and reputation by telling the world what she was, he was afraid of her. 

He’d been afraid of her ever since the clockwork angel necklace her mother had given her and burst forth in a rush of golden light. The angel had saved her life when she was seven years old and then again when she was eleven. It had saved her from him. 

"You are an abomination," he growled. 

"Perhaps but at least I've got a shred of decency left in my soul," Tessa said. 

"Your kind does not-" 

"My kind?" Tessa had been playing at bravery. She had been putting on the act of bravado and calm. She'd kept a leash on the anger because she wanted to be the bigger person, the better person. She was trying to be the person that Ella Herondale thought she was. Someone Jem Carstairs would smile at. Someone Will Herondale could glance at for a silent conversation. 

That comment snapped her out of the brave and stoic act and threw her headlong into the anger. 

"The most monstrous blood in my veins does not come from the demon that violated my mother. It comes from you and this horrible family. Demons murder children because they are evil because it is in their nature, you had the option to be something else, to be something better, and you chose what you did." 

"I didn't do anything." 

"You attempted to drown an eleven-year-old girl. You raised me. I had lived in your home for six years. You bought me gifts and taught me to read and I always knew that you love Melody more but I had believed - truly believed - even when you pushed my head underwater that you were my family and you cared for me." 

She stood there and stared him down. He didn't even try to interrupt her. 

"I had thought it was some sort of baptism. Some sort of ritual that would allow me to take the runes and rejoin the party. I thought you were trying to help me. I was a child and you were my uncle. You were all the family I had. If it hadn't been for the necklace, if it hadn't been for the angel, you would have done it. Wouldn't you? You weren't trying to frighten me or drive out an evil spirit like some uneducated priest. You knew no exorcism would work. The Silent Brothers told you." 

"You are not human." 

"No," she snapped. She shook her head, pushing a stray bit of hair back. She was seething now. Her face was hot and her hands shook. The Silent Brothers had told her mother when she was seven-years-old that she was singular. She hadn't understood it fully then. She hadn't understood it until she was in the Silent City instead of a party hall having cake with her cousin and her friends. They'd had to explain it to her. 

"No, I am not. I am Nephilim. Like you are. That's what bothers you. I have warlock blood in my veins but I am Nephilim. That's what they say isn't it? Shadowhunter blood is dominant. I remember those words from the Silent Brothers as they explained their theory of what I was and why the runes neither took nor harmed me. 

"They were calm about it. Just a statement of fact. I remember. They said Shadowhunter blood is dominant. I am one of you. You don't have to like it but I am done being cowed and threatened and beaten down into the corner so you can pretend I don't exist." 

"You are going to destroy this family." 

"Maybe this family deserves it," Tessa said. 

She walked past him, gave him a wide berth, and stalked out into the hall. She slammed the door behind her. She was breathing hard. Her hands were shaking and she could feel tears threatening in her eyes but she was done being frightened of this man. 

She forced her feet to move slowly and evenly as she walked away from him and on to something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were two updates today, the other one was the prologue, so you have to double back to chapter 1 to read it. 
> 
> There's another one coming tomorrow. My brain is tapped out on editing tonight but it's 90% done so I'm gonna finish it tomorrow. It is much cheerier than this one. 
> 
> First we assure everyone that Melody is not an asshole. Then we assure everyone that her dad really truly is. 
> 
> How much more of this story can I crank out before my socially distanced vacation ends? 
> 
> Do you think I can have it done by the time South Korea gets control of the current outbreak and I have to go back to work full time? (I am super lucky and thankful that I can do my job online and that the online version of my job is like 60% of my in person workload and that leaves a lot of brain space which I can hopefully turn to writing.)


	9. The Ghost and the Trickster

The anger faded into a kind of jittery anxiety that kept her pacing and kept her thoughts spinning in tight circles. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t Nephilim. She was a warlock. Except, she wasn't really that either. Warlocks had magic and she had nothing. 

Halfway down the top floor hall, there was a bench that ran under a small window. It was hidden in a recess so anyone glancing down the hallway wouldn’t see her. She’d been using it as a hiding place since she’d first come to the Institute. She would tuck herself away with a book and pretend that she was somewhere else. In those days, the scars on her back had still hurt and this was where she had come to sit and wish it all away. 

Footsteps startled her and she snapped her head up.

Will. 

She was relieved enough that he wasn’t Uncle Reginald that she smiled at him. He blinked back. The suit he wore was well cut which made him look very tall. His hair was a bit rumpled and the jacket was unbuttoned but he still looked like he’d just stepped out of a painting or off the pages of a very dramatic romance novel. 

He ruined it by speaking. 

"What are you doing here?" he asked. Harsh. Annoyed. Like she was the last person he wanted to see. She scowled back at the tone. 

"Hiding. You?" she said. 

His face softened and he had the good graced to look embarrassed by his rudeness. He looked down at his shoes for a moment like a little boy. When he looked up again, his voice was gentler. 

“Running away.” 

"Any luck? Families aren't easy to escape." 

"I don't need to escape them. I just need a few minutes away from them. Is there a roof door?”

“Other side of the training room,” she said. 

A nod and a glance in the direction of the stairs. He hesitated and Tessa gave herself a moment to watch him. He had all the poise of a gentleman but the look on his face was too open. She wasn't going to say that he was vulnerable. People like William Herondale didn't have vulnerability in their blood. 

He didn't smile but he jerked his head before he kept going. 

It wasn’t an invitation. That would be ridiculous. He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. 

Maybe it was an invitation. 

Tessa didn't move. She sat on her bench where she'd wrapped herself up in old bad memories and just stared at him. He watched her for a moment but when she didn’t get up, he bobbed his head again and disappeared around the corner. The hallway suddenly felt very empty. 

These overtures of friendship only lasted as long as she could keep the secret of what she really was. She should stay where she was and not get too used to having friends around. They would leave and go back to London and she would be left with the family she had been born into and nothing else. 

Tessa swore softly at herself. 

She scrambled up out of her place and followed after him. She had returned the perfect pink dress to Ella and was wearing one of her own dresses, an ancient yellow thing that had little embroidered details that she liked but otherwise wasn’t worth the fabric it was made out of. She felt vain and stupid for worrying about how old-fashioned her gown was. There were so many other problems with her behaviour. To start with, she was following the man her cousin intended to marry out onto the roof - alone. 

She rounded the corner and Will glanced back at her. He nodded and paused long enough for her to catch up. Then he was moving again. He walked fast in long sharp strides that made his shoes click against the stone floors. Up here, no one had bothered with carpets, the floor was naked stone worn flat by years of priests or monks or whoever had lived here and then polished to a shine by nearly a century of Shadowhunter boots passing over it on the way to the training room. 

Will didn't speak. He just kept going. There was a door at the end of this hallway and it opened out onto a small terrace and once he was out on it, he hopped up on the rail and headed out across the rooftop. Tessa hesitated again. When he looked back at her, there was a challenge in that expression. She shot him a little glare and hiked the skirt up and followed. The slant was mild and the shingles rough enough that she didn't slip. Will held out a hand and pulled her up onto a ledge high above the windows. 

The sky was painted in yellows and oranges as the sun set. It was getting closer to dinner than she’d imagined. The day was fading quietly into evening and Tessa kept her eyes on the sky. A cool breeze pushed the clouds eastward. It changed the patterns of the sunset and blew stray pieces of hair across her face. She would need to redo her chignon before dinner. 

Will didn't talk for a long time. They sat there, balanced high above the ground, watching the lights of the city below them start to come on as the sun sank. Tessa drew a knee up and set her chin on it. Her skirts ballooned around her. She wasn't wearing a hoop which the dress really needed so there was far too much fabric and not nearly enough shape. She smoothed it down around her so her legs weren't on complete display. 

Will wasn't looking at her. All his attention was on the city and the sky. A breeze ruffled his hair and he had to shake it out of his eyes. She hadn't come dressed for the weather and shivered. 

Without a word, Will shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it around her shoulders. She pulled it close and glanced at him but he was staring at the city again. She tilted her head back and looked at the first stars above instead. The night sky was starting to appear through the gaps in the clouds as the sun sank lower. 

"Jem said that one of your friends was a ghost. How do you befriend a ghost?" she asked. 

"Ghosts are lonely, they're easy to befriend if you can hear them." 

She nodded. "I understand that." 

They lapsed back into silence. 

"I feel like a ghost sometimes. I died when my mother did and there was no one left to care about me. Or I died on the day of my first runing. If no one in the world cares about you, do you really exist at all?" she murmured. 

The words slipped out into the silence between them. This moment wasn't real. This quiet, the warmth of his jacket, the way his hair tangled around his face, the look in his eyes as he turned to look at her. He looked at her. Not in her direction. Not around her. Not at the idea of her. At her. His eyes met hers and her heart stuttered. 

"You're still here," he said. 

"Just a haunting." 

"The Ghost of the York Institute," he said and it was said in that sarcastic tone but she'd been watching him talk to Jem and Ella all day and that sarcastic tone was reserved for them. He spoke with perfect respect to his father and the Starkweather gentlemen but he also fled every room his father was in as soon as he could invent an excuse. That edge in his voice meant something. She had assumed it meant mockery but he only used it with people he liked. She watched him to see if the expression matched the tone. A tilted smile. Not quite happy but not cruel. This was an invitation. 

"I should become a poltergeist," Tessa said. 

"That sounds entertaining. I could claim possession and we could smash half the place,” Will said. 

"They'd have to hire a priest, do an exorcism." 

"We could do a lot of damage before they found a proper priest. We should start in that spoils room." 

"No," she said. 

It ruined the joke. The conversation screeched to a halt. He had been teasing and playing and she was still smiling along but that hit wrong. She looked off over the city instead of at him. She didn't want to see his expression.

"Why?" he asked in a flat voice. 

Because the old man would have put her head in one of those cases if Reginald and Peter had told him the truth. 

The only reason she was still alive was that they had lied to him. They wanted her existence a secret more than they wanted her dead. Aloysius wasn’t very good at secrets anymore. He was an old man and he would rant and rave and explain and he wouldn't keep their secrets. So her uncles had lied to him so he would keep her away from everyone else. 

She couldn't risk telling Will that story. 

There was a different one. 

"There's a case in the back," she said. "I found it just after I moved here. I had a gruesome sort of fascination. I'd never met a Downworlder and spoils rooms are very out of style in Idris so I'd never seen a dead one either. There was this case with a tiny little skull in it. I thought it must belong to some tiny little creature. Some sort of faerie maybe since it had little horns. I was precocious and lonely and bored and I went to look it up. There were little identification cards and they matched up to files in the archive room." 

He nodded slowly and she looked away from him as she continued talking. 

"Melody and I weren't raised the way that my great-grandfather might have raised children. We were raised to follow the law and we were raised after the Accords had been signed. No one in my family is going to invite a warlock to tea -" she paused and had to drag her attention back to push on, "- but they didn't teach us to murder without cause." 

Will didn't say a word so she kept talking, she pulled herself deeper into his jacket and watched the dark sky as the words kept coming. "I assumed that my great-grandfather would have followed those rules as well. That if there was a tiny skull in a case in the spoils room, then it belonged to a monster who deserved to die because it had done monstrous things." 

"This story has a bad ending," he said. 

"It ended in 1794, so, it's hardly news but yes. The ending is bad," she said. "I found the records. It wasn't a faerie or a monster. It was a six-year-old. A child. A warlock child but a little boy. They hadn't set out to murder the child directly but it had happened in the course of the attack. He was being raised by a warlock who lived in a town and had been performing spells near mundanes. Nothing dangerous. The list of suspected spells was mostly healing magic but magic is magic." 

Will swore very softly. 

"It's not that he died that stayed with me. It's that they didn't bother to record his name and kept his bones in a box like they were a curiosity or a trophy. Going in there and smashing it up wouldn't make us better people." 

"No, it wouldn't," Will said. 

Will went quiet and she sighed. It was better when she didn't talk. At least that way, she couldn't ruin a perfectly good conversation with discussions of skulls and murders committed by her ancestors. 

"We could start with Old Reggie's study instead," Will said. She looked over at him and he smiled. Mischievous and beautiful for it. "He's trying so hard to pretend he doesn't despise the Accords and everything they stand for. He probably isn't keeping anyone's remains in cases there." 

"We could smash all his pens," she said. 

"That's specific." 

"They're very expensive. Most of them are Italian. He has them specially ordered from a craftsman in Milan," she said. 

"We could just go in and bend all the nibs, just slightly, just enough that he doesn't realize what's wrong only that they don't work as they used to," Will said. 

It was Tessa's turn to laugh. Really laugh. When she looked up, Will was watching her. The sky was dark now and she could only see him thanks to the light from the corridor behind them. It lit him in stark shadows, making him into a dramatic caricature. Ella had told Jem that Will wasn't very nice to most people and right now he looked it. He looked every inch like the mischievous trickster. 

"We'll be late for dinner if we sit up here planning evil deeds much longer," she said. 

"Do you think it will scandalize everyone if we came in together like a windswept mess?"

The odd bubbly happiness rattling around in her chest after laughing over the destruction of writing implements faded at the question. 

She was just another tool for Will to use in his plans to irritate his father and offend her uncle. Befriending her was a way to bother them and she needed to remember that before she started to get the wrong ideas. 

"I should go fix my hair, Mr. Herondale," she said. 

A slow nod and he looked out at the city again. 

She swung her feet around so she wouldn't flash too much of her stockings to him when she stood. She hurriedly caught her balance and scampered across the roof tiles back to the door that they'd left hanging open. She turned around and found him still watching her. 

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said realizing that she was stealing his jacket. 

She shrugged out of his jacket and he stood, coming towards her to take it. He stepped over the tiles without looking down, sure and steady on his feet. She had taken the first step back down into the building and he was above her. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him. Once he had the coat in hand, she turned away and hadn't planned to look back. 

"Miss Starkweather?" he said. 

She turned and looked at him, her hand on the railing of the staircase.

"Thank you," he said. 

That startled her. "For what?"

"For being a better person than the people around you. I don't think I'd be able to do it. Any good in me is there because of my family. My only hope of being decent is how my mother raised me to be, because of who my sisters need me to be, because of the friends who demand more of me when I fall short, because of Jem," he said.

"You don't know that," she said. 

"I appreciate the vote of confidence but I still think you're a better person than I am." 

She looked at him for a moment. 

"You're thanking me for not being as awful as my Uncle Reginald?" she said. "Because that's honestly a low bar. It's a few steps above tapeworms and poison ivy." 

The joke worked. It broke the strange intensity of his expression and made him laugh at her. 

"I'll see you at dinner, Mr. Herondale." 

"Dinner with the tapeworm and the dinosaur," Will said. 

Tessa gave him a last smile and then turned and hurried down the hallway to disappear into her room and get her thoughts back in order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the last chapter, we need some kind of fluffy Will and Tessa bonding.


	10. Marry for Love, Marry for Misery

Will was hiding. Melody wanted him to help her scheme her way through telling her parents about their lack of engagement and so he was avoiding her. His father was sick of York and the long irritated looks had taken on a different tone. Tessa had been avoiding him since their conversation on the rooftop and he wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to offend her nor why it bothered him so much. 

He wanted to be done with all of it but the only way out was something he couldn’t bear to think about for too long. So instead of thinking about it directly, he was hiding in a corner of the library that was dusty and dark and obviously not well-traveled. There were two chairs and a writing desk hidden away behind a shelf full of dictionaries. The little study space was probably meant for students but none of the York Shadowhunters were foolish enough to send their children here to be educated. 

Will had draped himself across one of the two chairs and was studying the beams of the ceiling. Dark wood with patches where someone had tried to brighten it up with some whitewash. The paint job was patchy and it had faded to a yellow-gray that was far worse than the wood grain where that peaked through. Will put a lot of attention on those patches and tried really hard to think about Institute repair budgets. 

“You are moping,” Jem said dropping himself down in the other chair. “I could feel it clear across the building.” 

“My father wants to leave.” 

“We all want to leave,” Jem said. “One more dinner where Reginald glares at Tessa and Aloysius rants about the evils of werewolves or the idiocy of mundanes and I’m going to book a ticket and abandon you.”

Will sighed. “Do you think having parents like ours set us up for unreasonable expectations? I know that your parents are - were - as in love as mine always have been. It wasn’t even something that I wanted, it was just something I assumed would happen. And it did.” 

“And look at it now, love has been a mess,” Jem said. 

Will gave up his study of the ceiling and sat up properly to study him. Jem had a soft smile on his face. The silver in his eyes caught just enough of the light in their shadowy corner to be eerie but every line of his face was familiar and beautiful. He’d fallen in love with Jem so slowly that he hadn’t realized it was happening until it was far too late. 

Jem had been better than him at the Academy, far more accurate in every knife throw or foot placement. Will, according to his favourite tutor, had a brawler’s grace. He fought with intention and strategy but wasn’t afraid to let a fight get messy if that’s what it took to win. He’d had proper instruction, of course, but his father was practical and taught his children to win, not to perform. Will had furthered that particular study by running around with the mundane kids he found when he snuck out of the Institute on adventures. His first fights hadn’t been the Academy’s timed and supervised drills, they had been with boys twice his size down by the docks. Those kids had fought to win and Will learned that footwork and strength weren’t going to save you against an opponent who fought dirty. 

Jem had studied, not just had basic training, studied with his mother long before he came to Alicante. He had a dancer’s poise and surgeon’s precision and the teachers all liked him better for it. Will still believed that sometimes you needed to tackle your opponent to the ground or bash them across the face with a frying pan. Back then, they’d wanted to train that precision into William Herondale and so he’d been paired up with Carstairs over and over, drill after drill, in hopes that some of that poise would rub off. 

Instead, Will had taught the teacher’s golden boy how to fight like a dockworker. They’d pushed each other to be better, faster, stronger. They’d fallen asleep in the corner of libraries with their heads tilted together. They’d shared rooms and weapons and meals and beds. Somewhere along the line, Will had forgotten how he’d ever lived without James Carstairs. Somewhere along the line, they’d fallen in love. 

Jem reached out and rapped on the table sharply and Will’s attention snapped back to him. Jem paused, waited until he was sure that Will was looking at him. 

“Let go of the idea that you have to marry for love,” Jem said. 

Will flopped back against the chair and turned his attention back to the ceiling. Loving this man was a mistake. This man was a pain in the goddamn arse and Will did not need him. Jem ignored the dramatics. 

“Many people don’t marry for love. People marry for money or for influence or for a better family name. They marry to protect their inheritance or secure an alliance. You don’t need any of that. Pick someone you actually like.” 

Will groaned. 

“You and I, we got it backwards. You’re not supposed to fall in love with your parabatai. They’re supposed to be your dearest friend but not that kind of love. So you got it backwards once, try getting it backwards again. Marry a friend.” 

Will laughed but there wasn’t any joy in it. He closed his eyes and said, “This is about Theresa.” 

“This is about you.” 

“It’s also about her.” 

“I like her better than your other options.” 

That caught Will’s attention. It wasn’t the comment he was expecting and he tilted his head to study Jem. Jem had leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers tapping together as he looked at the shelf beside him. He felt Will’s attention and turned back to look at him. 

“Really?”

“Even if you choose someone else, I think we should bring her to London. It would make Ella happy and she deserves better than this,” Jem said. 

Will closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He could almost imagine it. He could imagine seeing Tessa sitting with his sisters at a family gathering or finding her reading in the drawing room. The half-imagined possibilities weren’t as abhorrent as the imaginary process of trying on a potential wife usually was. 

Will wasn’t marrying for love. 

He wasn’t even marrying because he wanted a wife. 

He was marrying because it was the right thing to do to protect his family and the people he loved from a scandal that could drown them all. If you fell in love with your parabatai and the Clave found out, they separated you. That separation would kill Jem and the scandal would taint his father’s chances of climbing the ranks in the Clave and it would complicate sisters’ chances of making a good match and finding a good marriage. 

He hated every inch of the entire dog and pony show of finding and selecting a girl to propose to. He hated thinking about practicalities like finding a house and whether or not there would be children and whether she was a good conversationalist and what kind of family connections she had. All of those considerations made his head hurt. 

Choosing someone his mother would like, that was easier to face. 

Choosing someone his sisters could laugh with and tell jokes to over family dinners, that was easier to face. 

Choosing someone who would treat Jem with the respect he deserved, that was easier to face. 

Picking a wife was unbearable. 

Picking a daughter in law for his mother to fuss over and teach Welsh words to was easier. 

Will sighed. “You are manipulating me.” 

“I am not.” 

“You’ve set up this whole conversation to convince me that I’ve come to this conclusion on my own.” 

“You’re very clever, I knew you would,” Jem said. 

“Those evenings, when my mother gathers everyone around the fire and makes us listen to folktales from Wales,” Will started. “Can you imagine Melody Starkweather sitting in that room?”

Jem snorted a little but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. It has hard to picture. Melody had no interest in folktales or mundane culture beyond a vague paternalism. She would sit there in her nice gown while everyone else sat around in their pajamas with teacups and their feet up in slippers. She didn’t fit in that quiet warm room. It was easier with Tessa. Will had a hard time imagining himself with her but it was easier to imagine her with his family. 

“Doesn’t she deserve better?”

“Your mother?” Jem said and Will looked over to see him smiling fondly. “Your mother doesn’t need a willing audience, we all end up trapped there week after week. She’d convince Melody to stop interrupting her with comments on recipes and that thing she read once about Wales.” 

“No. Tessa.” 

“Does Tessa deserve better? Better than what?” Jem said. 

“Her family’s treatment of her has been deplorable but to leave one loveless home for another, is that fair? Doesn’t she deserve a husband who could love her?”

“I’d take that offer if I were in her place but I cannot make that decision for someone else. You’ll have to ask her.” 

Will’s mood crept back into his voice. “Are you suggesting that I tell her all the sordid details?”

Jem smacked him hard in the chest. 

“If you go around sharing intimate details about me with anyone, I will drown you in the Thames myself. That said. It’s only fair to go in with the cards on the table. She’s too smart to believe you if you lie about having fallen madly in love in the last few days.”

“Maybe I have. Maybe I’m ass over tea kettle.” 

“I have a constant window into the hellish tornado that is your emotional state.” 

“Oh, so do you have an opinion on my emotions?”

“You like her.” 

That wasn’t what Will had meant. He had meant it as a sarcastic jab about his emotions in general. 

“You enjoy her company. You find talking with her interesting. You genuinely laugh when she makes a joke. You like her. That’s a good place to start an attachment, Will. Marriages have been built on less.” 

“They’ve also been built on more.” 

Jem smiled at him and said, “I have this idiot friend from Wales.”

Will laughed. 

“And he told me what I thought was an absurd tradition where Welshmen carve wooden spoons and give them to their fiances.” 

“It’s not absurd.”

“Spoons.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Spoons, William. Spoons.” 

“I hate you.” 

“I know.” 

Jem pushed on, “There was an emperor in India who built a massive beautiful building of white marble to the person he loved. The Taj Mahal took 16 years to build. A farm boy carving a spoon may be a smaller love story but it isn’t lesser. The existence of grander things doesn’t determine the value of anything else.” 

“Your point?”

“Just because it isn’t a perfect love story for the ages, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be worth something. I think you should make her a spoon. Honour your heritage.” 

“Fuck off,” Will said.

Will had wanted to break through the conversation, to laugh and brush it all off but Jem didn’t give him the chance. Jem ignored the curse and Will’s sarcastic tone. His expression went serious and intense and Will wanted to squirm away from the conversation but he was caught in his eyes. 

“I love you, William Herondale,” Jem said and Will sat up and looked at him. Jem had turned all his attention on Will now. “I love you. I’ve loved you since we met. Maybe that love has changed over the years but I loved you as a brother and a friend long before we fell into this.” 

Will caught himself before he leaned in and did something that would hurt them. 

“I don’t want impossible things. I don’t want magic cures or to rewrite the Parabatai oath. All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I can’t be happy without you,” Will said. 

“I’m not going anywhere yet.” 

“You’re not going anywhere. I want the impossible things, James. I want miracles and cures and-” 

Jem pulled his sleeve up over his hand and slapped his hand over Will’s mouth. 

“Stop being selfish,” he said. 

Will bristled but Jem didn’t give him time to argue. 

“Stop dreaming and wishing and come back to the real world. This is the hand we were dealt. This is us playing through the last hand in a losing game. You are going to make it through this. You are going to be an old man someday and you will remember me and you will remember us and you’ll smile about it because it was, in its own disastrous way, beautiful. For that to happen, you must make it through this.” 

Will stayed still. 

“If you won’t do it for yourself or your mother or your sisters or your family’s reputation. Do it for me. I am going to die, William. I am going to die. It’s time we both start making our peace that and I can’t if it means taking you with me,” Jem said and his voice cracked a little as he pulled his hands back and rolled them into fists. 

Will mirrored it because otherwise he was going to reach out and he couldn’t do that. 

“The greatest piece of solace I will have on the day I die is knowing that you are happy and that you will live a long good life. I need you to live,” Jem said. 

“Don’t talk about leaving me.” 

“Don’t talk like you want to come with me.” 

Will squeezed his eyes shut and leaned in. Jem pulled him in and they settled so that Will’s head rested on Jem’s shoulder. Playing with fire but not getting burned. Not yet. Will desperately wanted to throw himself into the pull and the magic of the broken bond. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to end in a tragic romance? Romeo and Juliet with their daggers and their poisons and their grand gestures? 

“Romeo and Juliet were idiots,” Jem said as though he had heard the thoughts. “We’re better than that. Life is a wheel, Will. This life isn’t the only chance our souls have. We are bound, beyond the oath. We will find each other in whatever comes after this life.” 

“We are bound and you promised. Whither thou goest-”

“Naught but death,” Jem interrupted. 

He sat back, pulling away from the almost touch. He shook his hair and pasted on a smile while Will stayed exactly where he had been. 

Jem said brightly, “And besides, I’m not dying any time soon. I want you to take a chance on being happy. I want you to marry a woman who might make you smile now and again. Someone who will spend time with your hellion sisters and let your mother teach her Welsh. Someone who will read all your book recommendations so I don’t have to. It doesn’t need to be a love story to matter, Will. Stop holding out for the Taj Mahal and make a girl a damn spoon.” 

“Hubris, thy name is Carstairs,” Will muttered.

“What’s that?”

“You just compared yourself to the Taj Mahal.” 

“Another fair point. I’m not building you a temple. I’m just not going to do it. The best you’ll get out of me is a few bars of violin music.” 

“Can we make a deal?”

“It depends on the terms.” 

“Your line is supposed to be: yes, Will, my darling, anything.” 

“Tell me the terms.” 

“Promise that you’ll play something for me when we get home,” Will said. “I love you too and I want you happy. I want you to be happy and live to be ninety-four and compose sonatas and buy four hundred different sets of throwing knives and tell anyone who will listen why each one is slightly different. You’re not allowed to give up.” 

“I’m not giving up on anything, Will. There is a difference between practicality and despair. I will stay with you as long as I can, in whatever way I can. I promise you that. Promise me that you’ll find a better romantic paragon than Romeo The Idiot Montague.” 

“I think I’m more of a Juliet.” 

“Also a bit of an idiot.” 

“You have no sense of romance or drama.” 

“Everyone dying is not romantic. That play is a tragedy,” Jem reminded him. 

Jem let Will spin the conversation this time, making it into a long joke about the differences between comedies and tragedies. He laughed along but the intensity of the conversation didn’t entirely vanish. When Jem finally waved off any more talk of Shakespeare and got up, he came to stand by Will’s chair, close enough to touch. 

“It doesn’t need to be perfect, William,” he said. “You don’t need to marry for love. Just promise me that you won’t marry for misery.”

“I promise,” Will said. 

Jem gave him a last smile and then left him to sit in that dreary corner by himself and think about misery and Welsh lessons and Tessa Starkweather and wooden spoons and Jem. 

Always Jem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who ordered Heronstairs for New Years? Me apparently. 
> 
> I posted on Tumblr that the time line in this fic is a little wonky and then had a conversation with a beta reader and realized that um yeah, I can just let the timeline be like that. Some time has passed between chapters. How much? Who knows! I'm actually going to be going back and doing a tiny brush edit on stuff to smooth out references to exact amounts of time and I will then leave it entirely to the reader to decide the time line of these events. I present to you the order in which things happen but make no guarantees on the exact timing of these events. 
> 
> Happy New Years to you and yours. May it be brighter than the last. May there be food on your table and money in your pocket and just the right ratio of fluff and angst in your fanfic for all of 2021. 
> 
> My family has this tradition where you have to have food on the table and money in your pocket at midnight. One year it was doritoes. I still remember once when I was about nine, my dad going, "oh crap," and passing out loonies and tossing a bag of chips on the table because it's bad luck if there is no food on the table and it was like 11:58 at this point so there was no time to prepare food but chips are food and food on the table is food on the table, you know? It was probably one of the first new years where I got to stay up to midnight so it made an impression. On the other side of the family, my Scottish Granny believes strongly in the first foot and once made one of the uncles stand outside because he was blond and blonds are bad luck to have for your first foot** and so he had to stay on the porch, at midnight, in January, in Canada, until a dark haired friend or relative showed up to come in first. 
> 
> ** first foot is your first visitor of the new year, Scots go visiting after the countdown and call it 'first footing' and basically go around visiting their neighbours and getting drunk for a few hours after midnight.


	11. Over Dinner

Tessa’s day had started so well and then it had all gone downhill at dinner. She found herself sitting between Will and his father which wouldn’t have been such an issue if Melody wasn’t sitting across from her watching. She couldn’t tell if Melody was hurt that Tessa had stolen the spot beside Will or if that expression meant something else. It set her on edge before her Great-Grandfather even appeared in the room. 

The old man greeted the elder Mr. Herondale and Uncle Reginald and then nodded his head in the direction of everyone under the age of forty. He sat at the head of the table and for a few moments, it looked like he was just going to sit down and eat without making any grand pronouncements. Everyone held their breath for a moment. 

"Elizabeth,” he said. “What-”

“Theresa,” Tessa corrected hoping to derail the question. 

Her grandfather wasn’t always perfectly lucid but he was careful about keeping that a secret. He could still recognize his own good and bad days and usually took his dinner in his room if he was having a bad day. He blinked at her. Considered who she actually was and what he had just said. 

“I thought you said she was sick?" Aloysius asked turning to her uncle. 

“That was days ago,” Uncle Reginald said in a tight voice. 

"This seems tense. Is this going to become a big dramatic row?" Will asked Tessa in a very low voice. 

"Not while you're here," she said. 

"Should we all manufacture an excuse to leave for a few minutes and then burst back in for the show?" 

Tessa considered that. She considered the look on her grandfather's face and the way her uncle's lips had pinched. When this fight finally came, when one of them finally started arguing about it, it would be about her. Her uncle was tense and annoyed because Tessa was going to hurt Melody’s marriage prospects. He was tense and annoyed because she wouldn’t obey him the way that he expected to be obeyed. 

When it boiled over, and it would eventually, of it would be aimed at her. She had disobeyed. She had caused a problem. She was always causing a problem. There would be the usual admonishments that she be grateful that they bothered to keep her at all when she was such trouble. 

Right now, it was a doddering old man and his disgruntled grandson but there was a hair’s breadth between that and a the eruption of a family feud with her smack in the middle of it. 

"Only if you take me with you," she whispered back to Will. 

"They're a handsome couple," Aloysius said loudly. "I knew it would be a good match." 

Tessa coughed on her soup and beside her Will made a sound that might have been, "Ah," but he cut it off before it got even that far.

"Great-Grandfather," Melody started in that very charming tone she had had since they were little kids and she was about to start negotiating for extra pudding. She hesitated before she said, "Theresa joined us for a walk in the park, it was quite lovely. Did we have a chance to tell you about it? There were ducks and I even saw a swan." 

This was perfectly inane but it worked to distract everyone from Aloysius's first choice for a topic of conversation. He started in on a lecture about swans and faeries that became a diatribe about faeries in general. 

Will cast a glance down the table at Jem who was not looking at him. Jem was not looking up at all. He was sitting close enough to Aloysius that he had to lean back to avoid getting smacked by a particularly emphatic hand gesture. He still didn’t look up. Will glanced at Tessa next. She met his gaze. Most of the table was looking at Aloysius. He had that effect on people. Ella was frowning at the old man, caught somewhere between her natural compassion and discomfort at his vitriol. 

"I have a proposition," Will said in that very low voice. 

Melody looked over. She was too far away to hear what he had said but she had heard that he was talking and that his head was bent toward Tessa. 

She had been Tessa's closest friend once and in the years since the disaster of a first runing ceremony that they had share, she had remained someone that Tessa could rely on not to be cruel. Melody didn't know the secrets. Melody still treated Tessa as an odd but not disliked cousin rather than a stain on the family name like her parents did. 

This was going to be the end of that alliance. 

She turned and raised her eyebrows at Will. 

"Do I look like your mistress?" she asked. 

She had hoped to shame him or offend him but he took it as a joke. The conspiratorial look on his face became a smile. He was hard to look at directly when he was smiling and she looked back down at the soup. She had no idea what kind of soup it was. Her spoon stirred it around as she stared down at it. Bits of something floated in it. 

"No, but if you kissed me, we could probably make at least a few of your relatives scream," he said. 

She raised her head and narrowed her eyes. His smile was mischievous and teasing and she had no idea how to read this mood. Was he serious? Was he making fun of her? He was looking at her like they were sharing the joke but she'd shared so few jokes with so few people that maybe she was misreading that. 

"No." 

"Think of the chaos, at least it would be entertaining." 

"Mr. Herondale," she said. They were still whispering and her great-grandfather was still talking about the evils of the faerie courts and drowning out all other attempts at conversation. No one could hear them but Melody wasn't the only one who had noticed. Jem was looking their way and a moment later he'd caught Ella's attention and she was glancing at them. 

Tessa wanted to leave. She was still looking directly at Will because he had eyes that were hard to look away from. 

She tried again, "Mr. Herondale. You get to return to London at the end of this farce. I don't. I am stuck here among these people for the rest of my life. You'll excuse me if I don't find antagonizing them as entertaining as you do." 

Before Will's expression could turn into an answer, his father interrupted all the conversation by asking in a too loud voice. "William, didn't you engaged in diplomacy with the Seelie last year? He went with Branwell to help negotiate a peace with a band of free fae in Cornwall, was it?" 

Her great-grandfather turned a suspicious glance on Will and he turned his body away from Tessa. She hadn't realized that he had leaned in until he straightened. He met that suspicious gaze with a bright smile. His eyes hadn't lost that conspiratorial shine as he gestured carelessly with a fork. 

"I did, it took us nearly 2 weeks," he said. 

He tilted his head and even without knowing him very well at all, she knew he was angling for trouble. His father had set this shot up. It was fascinating to Tessa how the entire family seemed to move together. Siblings she could understand, Will and Ella and their stories of the little sister, Cecily were one thing. Their father carefully setting up all the pieces of the chaos that was about to ensue was something else altogether. 

Now Will was going to start an argument. 

Over dinner. About faeries. With her grandfather. 

She'd had this fantasy. Sometimes, she imagined that one of the visiting Shadowhunters would tear into the old man for being an old-fashioned degenerate and remind him that the Accords had been signed more than a decade ago and it was time for him to start honouring them. In other versions of the fantasy, she was the one who would start the argument. She was the one who would tell him all the reasons that he was wrong. She would demand that he recognize that warlocks might not be human but that didn't mean they weren't people.

"I only got the invite because an old friend of mine was on the negotiating team and Charlotte thought that we would get a better response if she brought a familiar face," Will started. 

If he saw the narrowed eyes, he ignored it. Her Great-Grandfather look suspicious and Uncle Reginald positively scandalized. Will was warming to his theme and getting more animated. Jem shook his head and Ella sat back in her chair like she was at a sporting match and wanted a better view. 

"So, this friend, we've known each other since I was a kid, which is a blink of an eye for a Faerie-" then he was off. Tessa found the details of his story, which got his sister laughing and Jem shaking his head indulgently, drifted over her head. She was too busy watching everyone else. 

Edmund Herondale was watching the table as closely as she was. He had known exactly what he was doing when he opened this topic of conversation. He wasn’t smiling but there was amusement in his eyes as he watched everyone try and remain polite while Will told an anecdote about faerie wine and invitations he could not repeat in the presence of a lady. 

Reginald was paying too much attention to Edmund and Will. Tessa could positively hear the wheels turning in his head as he tried to decide how to turn this to his advantage. He wasn't as vocally outraged by the Accords as his grandfather was but he was a very long way away from going drinking with a group of Faeries at a Downworld pub. Usually a declaration that such behaviour had even been considered would send Uncle Reginald into a fit of frowning and moralizing. 

But Will was a Herondale and so he could do no wrong. 

His father was the Head of the London Institute. A connection to the family would bring up the standing of the Starkweather name among the Institute heads across Europe. Those who worked in the Institutes and spent most of the year away from Idris, saw the Idris families as disconnected and pampered. If Reginald wanted to climb the ranks - and he did - he would need to sway some of them to his side. He saw Edmund Herondale as a piece of that puzzle. It was becoming more and more evident that Edmund Herondale did not share any such feelings. 

Tessa sat very still and quiet and watched. She watched her uncle weigh options and try and walk the middle line between offending Aloysius and appearing old-fashioned and disconnected to Will and his father. She ate her soup and watched Jem laugh at a piece of the story that she had missed. 

"I'll introduce you," Will said and it took her a moment to realize he'd turned his attention on her. 

She startled and tried to cover it up. 

"Ella invited you for Christmas didn't she?" he said. 

She hadn’t. Tessa hadn’t heard a thing about a Christmas party and suddenly being pulled into the conversation unnerved her. 

"Of course, she’s invited,” Ella declared. “London is one of the few Institutes that throws a proper Christmas party. Mam loves it. She loves those old mundane traditions and there's something special about cider and gingerbread, isn't there?" 

That set Melody off. Melody had obviously been invited to this Christmas party and she jumped back in to wax poetic about gingerbread. Ella got involved, going on about Christmas traditions and apple cider. 

"The fae hold a solstice event. It has a name that I swear I will look up before we go," Will said just to Tessa. Quiet, below the thread of Melody and Ella’s talk of baking. "But they have an archery competition that you might like to see." 

"I've never attended a Faerie party," she said. 

"Do you want to?" he asked. 

This held the same weight as Jem's questions from the walk in the park. It was some kind of test. Tessa glanced up the table and they were being watched again. Every time Will's voice dropped, he drew attention. She resisted the urge to look back at the cold soup. Where were the servants? Shouldn't they be clearing it and bringing something else? Was there another course? She had lost track of time and place and just about everything else. 

She held Will's gaze and finally nodded then added, "As long as I don't have to go alone." 

"I wouldn't invite you to a party and then abandon you there," he said. 

She smiled in spite of every jangling nerve. 

It wasn’t a promise. It didn’t mean anything. 

Or maybe it did. 

It meant something to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tessa doesn't know that Melody and Will have already come to their agreement that HA NOPE not getting married to each other because Melody is taking her sweet time breaking that to her father. 
> 
> Poor Will. Here he is, trying to be open minded, testing the waters and flirting just a little and Tessa spins around and bashes him over the head with a big stick that says "YOU ARE BEING RUDE" on it. (admittedly, hey wanna make out to make your uncle mad is BAD flirting)


	12. A Bright Spot

It was well after dinner and Will was in a weird mood. His thoughts were full of that story Tessa had told him of the child her great-grandfather had killed. No. His thoughts were full of the way that she had held onto that story. This Institute was full of death. It fed on it. It was the only thing that thrived here. Dead relatives on the walls. Dead ideas carefully saved and categorized in the library. All those dead people saved away in the spoils room. All while the living did but try not to disturb the tombs or the relics. 

In the middle of all that glorification of death was this woman who mourned but didn’t let it swallow her. She had called herself a ghost but she wasn’t. She was a bright spot and Will didn’t want to think about her staring out over the city. He didn’t want to think about her making jokes and telling sad stories and wearing his jacket. She was a bright spot and that was why she kept drawing his attention. 

She was just a girl. 

He’d made his decisions where girls were concerned. 

This ridiculous charade would pass and they could invite Tessa up for Christmas and Ella could take her shopping. She probably wouldn’t seem quite so bright or unusual outside of this Institute. She was just a girl. It would be nice to have someone well-read around to talk poetry with but that was as far as any of this would go. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed out every bit of evidence to the contrary. 

His mental gymnastics were interrupted by a knock at the door. 

He tapped out a complicated little rhythm that had Will smiling before he’d even dragged himself up out of the chair. He'd been sitting and staring at a book without really seeing the words. The book and the spinning thoughts weren’t distracting him from Theresa but this would. He left the book and thoughts of her and went to open the door. 

Jem stood in the hallway, bright-eyed and smiling and Will returned it. He was an excellent distraction. Jem had been unhappy and defensive for so long that seeing him smile was enough to throw every other thought out of Will’s head. His face lit up when he smiled. This smile went all the way to his eyes where his pupils were a little too wide. 

Every few days, Jem had to take a dose of a drug that would kill him in the long run. It would keep him alive a little longer but it was a balancing act of too much and not enough. He’d been putting it off. Will knew that. There were no patrols, no fighting, no anything here in York so Jem had been stretching the time between doses. This one was obviously hitting him harder than it usually did. Will bit back the worried comment in favour of just appreciating the smile. 

"Carstairs," he said. 

"I'm going out. Are you coming?" 

"Out? Is there a party? Do you have friends in town?" 

"No. I need to bring my own." 

"Do you?"

"I've already bullied your sister into coming and now I'm extending the invitation to you.”

Will didn't really want to share Jem's attention with Ella but Jem's mood was buoyant enough that he could get over the disappointment. 

"Just Ella?" 

"No."

Will made a complaining sound in the back of his throat. 

"I am bringing Tessa because I enjoy her company. She needs the diversion as much as the rest of us. Not everything is about you and your petty dramas." 

Will raised his eyebrows and said, "My petty dramas begin and end with you."

"A fact that I am choosing to ignore in favour of having a nice night running around this dreary horrible town instead of this dreary horrible Institute." 

Will smiled in answer to Jem's expression and the way he waved everything going on away as a petty drama. 

"Come with us," Jem said and then his smile shifted just a little, "Come with me." 

Will thought about saying no for just the briefest of moments. He was trying to avoid Theresa Starkweather. His sister would be there and she would be trying to help and Will would end up caught in the same cycle of having to be someone he was supposed to be. Jem was still smiling. He crossed his arms and he leaned against the door frame and waited Will out. 

“You’re thinking too hard. Don’t wallow,” Jem said. 

Will tried to scowl and Jem reached out and tucked a finger into Will’s belt loop. He tugged him a half step in and Will let himself be drawn closer. Jem did not do that. Jem did not cross the line first. Not any more. Jem was the careful one who didn’t like to play with fire. 

The nearness crackled along Will’s nerves. 

This close, almost touching, this was a very dangerous place to be and Will leaned into it. A brush of hair against his cheek as Jem craned his neck to look down the hall at an imaginary noise. The smell of leather and polish and burnt sugar. Will did not cross the line. Will did not bury his face against Jem’s neck and hold on. He held himself right at the edge of it. Close enough to feel the warmth of him but not close enough that the broken bond could ruin it. 

“Please?” Jem said. 

Will scowled at that.

“You’re manipulating me.” 

“I want to spend time with you. I am trying to remind you that you like spending time with me. Let your sister and her new friend play chaperon and come on a walk with me.” 

Will sighed but he was just being dramatic now. 

"Fine, you've convinced me." 

"Good,” Jem said stepping back and beaming at him. “Change into something you can run in and meet us by the servants' entrance on the east wall.”

"I can outrun you in my slippers." 

Jem laughed. "Your ego is not worth a nail through your foot or the things you might get on your socks." 

Will reached out and hooked his fingers into a loose buckle on Jem's weapons belt. He was only about half armed. They were going for a walk in town, they were probably not going to need what little Jem had brought. Will made a show of fitting his fingers into those loops and Jem watched him, smile shifting but not falling away. Will pulled him a half step forward.

"Do not ruin my night," Jem said. 

"I would never." 

Jem raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of doubt. Will laughed out loud. He had already fixed the loose buckle but he wasn't ready to step back yet so he refastened a few others and Jem let him. 

"Get dressed Herondale. Go fix your own clothes." 

Jem shoved him, a hand in the middle of his chest, harder than he needed to. That bit of contact - brief and harsh though it was - made Will’s heart beat a little too fast. He stumbled backwards but he was already laughing. 

Jem shook his head and walked away from him. 

“Get dressed,” he called back over his shoulder. “Now, not later.” 

“I am worth waiting for,” Will called back.

Jem flashed him another smile before he disappeared around the corner. Will just watched the spot where he had been for a little too long before closing the door. Will hummed something tuneless but happy to himself as he dug around in his trunk for his gear. It was petty and useless but he hadn't unpacked. His gear had only been brought out for a handful of training sessions and getting dressed to go out - really out - was a relief. 

He rushed through it. He chose whatever weapons were handy because it felt wrong to go out dressed in gear and not wear weapons. Once he was ready, he stupidly checked his hair in the mirror over the washbasin. Stupid vain boy. He shook his curls out and made a face at himself. He looked good enough. Good enough for nearly midnight in Yorkshire at least. 

The Institute was quiet around them as Will headed out into the night. He had no idea how to find the servants' entrance from inside the Institute so he took the garden door at the back and followed the wandering path past the Sanctuary wall to find the east side of the building. The grounds were quiet too, a few rustles in the branches and thick shadows unbroken by lamplight. Some of the windows reflected moonlight but none of them were lit by even a candle. The sleeping shell of a building loomed over him but he ignored it. 

He was looking for a bright spot. 

He was looking for Jem but it was unfamiliar laughter that carried through the dark. Goddamn Theresa Starkweather had a rich staccato laugh that came in little bursts. Will heard her before he saw light. The lamp over the servant’s entrance was on. Witchlight burned bluish against the gloom to light the way for the day staff who would come to start breakfast before the sun was up. The three of them were gathered under it. Tessa giggled with Ella, their heads tilted together over some joke that Will had missed. 

Jem caught sight of him first and gave him another blazing smile. 

Will returned it. 

"Where are we headed this fine evening?" Will asked. 

"Anywhere but here," Tessa said. 

"You're the local! This is your city! You must know some great places to visit," Ella announced. 

Tessa laughed again. She was a different person when she was happy. Will watched her as she giggled and waved off the comment. "Do you often go gallivanting around the city on your own Eleanor Herondale? Is that what proper London ladies do with their evenings?" 

"Firstly, I have never claimed to be proper. Secondly, I refuse to believe that you never sneak out. You're even sneakier than Jem!"

"Excuse you. I resent that remark, I am not sneaky," Jem said. 

Ella shook her head, "You are made of secrets." 

"I honour confidences. Not being a horrible gossip is not being sneaky,” Jem argued. 

Will came to join them in the light. He took up a place against the wall, at Jem’s side. Close enough to touch but not closing the distance. Jem turned to look at him and Will smiled again. 

"Climbing the walls to avoid your relatives, on the other hand, definitely counts as sneaking," Will said pointing at Tessa.

"I didn't say I wasn’t sneaky,” she gave him another smile. “All I said was that I don't wander the streets alone.

"So this will be a journey of discovery!" Will said. Ella’s enthusiasm and Tessa’s laughter were almost as energizing as Jem’s smile. "None of us know where in the hell we are going so we can all get flagrantly lost together! What fun!"

"I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not," Tessa said. 

"Assume that he is, just to be safe." 

They went out the front gate. They skipped opening the main doors which were heavy and creaked like banshees. This outing wasn't actually disallowed but there would be questions of propriety if they were caught. Tessa’s family would give them trouble. Melody would be sad about being left out. Will’s father would get annoyed. It was better that there was no one paying enough attention this long after dinner to notice them pushing through the courtyard door and escaping into the mundane city beyond. 

It did feel like an escape. 

Being away from the Institute was enough to make him feel a little freer and a little more like himself. Will tilted his head back and took in a deep breath of night air. The smoke of industry hung on it but not as thick as it did in London and when he opened his eyes again, he smiled. 

He caught Tessa looking at him and saw Jem turn away before Will made eye contact. Jem fell into step with Tessa and Will grabbed his sister by the arm and hauled her a few steps up the path. 

“Do not make things weird by trying to play matchmaker or I will boil you in a stew,” Will said. 

“I think cannibalism is illegal,” Ella said. 

“I’m not going to eat you. Just boil you.”

The road that led from the Institute toward the high street was quiet and empty at this time of night. Houses full of children and families all gone to bed at a reasonable hour. Ella held onto his arm and they walked along in silence for a little while. It wasn’t quite comfortable. It was the silence before the other shoe dropped. 

“Do you like her?” Ella asked. 

There it was. The other shoe smacking him up the side of the head. He scowled at his sister.

“Must we talk about it?”

“I am worried about you, baby brother. I am worried that you’re going to make a bad decision. What’s the saying, cut off your own nose to spite your face?”

“Is Tessa the bad decision in this analogy?”

“I don’t know!” Ella said loudly before dropping her voice down. “That’s why I am asking. I love her. Jem loves her. Father thinks she’s a bit too direct and confrontational which I think he meant as criticism but it’s honestly what you need because subtly bounces off your head like Newton’s apple. That said, I want you to be happy. I can adopt Tessa as a new friend without you getting involved. You’re not the most important piece in this.” 

“Can we just go for a walk?” Will asked.

He sighed and looked up at the night sky and wished that he hadn’t let Jem drag him out of his room. He could be curled up in the warmth in some comfortable pajamas with a book and his own thoughts and no family members to have opinions on his wellbeing. A long stare from Ella and Will crumpled under it. He looked at his sister and told her the truth. 

“I like her. I do not want to marry her but I like her. I want her to come to that Christmas party and I want you to take her shopping and I want to ask her what she thinks about Coleridge. I just don’t want to marry her. I don’t want to get married. Not now. Not like this. Is that a good enough answer?” Will said. 

Ella hugged his arm and put her head on his shoulder. “It’s a good answer and I don’t understand why it’s not good enough for Father. I don’t understand any of this and I wish you would trust me enough to tell me.” 

“I do trust you.” 

“But you won’t explain it.” 

“No.” 

“I hate you,” Ella said in a falsely sweet drawl. 

“I hate you, too,” Will said fondly.

He slowed her down and waited for the other two to catch up. Jem matched his stride to Will’s and they made their way deeper into the city together.


	13. On the Dark Streets

It took most of the walk from the Institute to the busier part of town to pull Will away from Ella. In the end, it had taken drafting Tessa into service to distract Ella from her interrogation. Tessa had laughed when Jem had suggested it. 

“He needs rescuing,” Jem whispered. “She’s just trying to help but he’s going to toss her into the river if we don’t intervene.” 

When Will slowed Ella down and demanded they draw the group back together, Tessa fell in at Ella’s side and started asking questions. It wasn’t contrived. The two of them were all smiles and happy chatter and Jem and Will were able to slip back a few steps and wrap themselves in the echo of the times before. Talking to Will like this always felt a little like coming home. The conversation wandered through absurd and unusual places as they talked about nothing. It felt almost normal. 

Around them, the city was settling in to go to sleep. While there were still drinking establishments and gambling hells with their doors open, the respectable side of York had retreated to their homes. York didn't have quite the capacity for cacophonous din that London did but it was making a strong attempt. They passed a pub as the door swung open and someone stumbled out, shouting and making Tessa jump. Ella grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side and a moment later they were laughing. 

“Do try not to corrupt the poor girl with your terrible habits, Ella,” Will chided. 

His sister turned on him and narrowed her eyes. “Who has terrible habits?”

Will’s stern expression fell into a smile and a moment later, Ella matched it. They said at the same time: “Cecily.” 

“Wait, who’s Cecily?” Tessa asked. 

“Their baby sister,” Jem said. “Well, not a baby. She’s twenty, respectably married-”

“Respectably,” Will scoffed. 

“Respectably married to Will’s childhood rival,” Jem corrected.

“And a hellion of exceptional grace and beauty who manages to hide her hellion ways by being so pretty that everyone forgives her for it,” Ella said. “Except Will.” 

“Once when she was fourteen, fourteen, she climbed up a demon. Climbed on to of it. Nearly gave all of us a heart attack,” Will said. 

“A feat others would call impressive,” Ella said. 

“I saw it, it was impressive,” Jem said. 

“She nearly died,” Will said. 

Ella let out a burst of laughter and shoved him in the chest. She pulled Tessa away up the street, telling stories of Cecily and her antics. 

This trip was supposed to be about Will’s future but it was obvious that Ella was the only one who was enjoying herself. She'd made a new friend and had been enjoying not having to be the perfect daughter or having to fend off questions about her matrimonial prospects. Ella made surface connections easily. She chatted and charmed at dinner parties and dancing but she didn't have many deep friendships. 

Her priorities were in all the wrong places for most of the daughters of London Shadowhunters. Ella wanted to train. Ella followed mundane politics and had opinions on Welsh sovereignty, something most of her peers couldn't even define. She had little interest in babies and less in husbands. Tessa with her archery and her willingness to keep an argument going was exactly what Ella needed. 

"Are you staring at pretty girls, Carstairs?" Will asked. 

"Just thinking," Jem said. 

Will made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat. 

Jem gave him a little shove, "Not everything is about you." 

"I am the sun and-" Will started and Jem took another swing at him. This time Will was ready for it and bounced backwards, dancing out into the street. Jem followed him, smiling as Will quoted some bit of poetry or Shakespeare or maybe it was just nonsense he had made up. 

"You're going to get run over!" Ella called from where she stood with Tessa under a street lamp. 

They were playing in the street but Will was all smiles. It was a little like being children again before everything had gotten complicated, long before everything had gone wrong. Just taunting and laughing and ignoring Will's sisters. 

But they were in the street and it wasn’t so late that the streets were quiet or empty. The sound of hooves pulled Jem’s attention away from Will’s smile. He glanced up to see a team of chestnut brown horses far too close and traveling far too fast. Jem grabbed Will's gear by a weapon's belt and tugged him out of the way of an oncoming carriage. They were glamoured, invisible to the mundanes around them. The horses thundered by without the driver even glancing in their direction. 

Jem had pulled Will off the street and up against the window of a milliner's shop. When he looked back from the carriage, Will was too close. 

Nose to nose but not quite touching. 

Jem could feel the threat of the pull. Maybe it was in his head, a memory of the sickening drop and gravity of the magic. Maybe it was the broken bond threatening to catch them before they’d even made contact. 

Will tilted in a little too close and his nose brushed Jem's cheek. 

The threat became a real flare of magic. 

His vision blurred and his stomach twisted as something deep inside him was yanked forward. His heart or his soul or an unnamed piece of himself started falling in. The shock and then the comfort of it.

This was the part he hated. 

The comfort. The ease. The little shock of the pull only lasted a moment before it started to feel good. This was where he was meant to be. This was all he wanted. This was home and safety and love. It would be so easy to give up and just curl up inside Will. All the fighting and dying and being would fall away and he would be home. 

Jem jerked back from the touch and straightened up. 

He sidestepped around Will who was still tilted in with his eyes shut and his lips pressed together. Will stood frozen in place with his fingers clenched into tight fists. 

Jem’s breathing wouldn’t settle. He wanted it back. 

"Fuck," Will said in a low voice. 

"I'm sorry, I start-" Jem said but Will interrupted him. 

"I'm not mad at you. I'm never mad at you. Ever," Will said. 

Jem was starting to shake it off. He couldn’t listen to that tone in Will’s voice. He resented it when the magic started to tangle into his emotions. That promise of safety and perfect peace was a lie built of broken magic and fragments of real feeling. It was a lie and he loved Will for a list of reasons that had nothing to do with that lie. 

"That's not true, remember that time I pinned all your clothing to the ceiling in third year? It took hours and I seem to recall that you were really mad about that," Jem said. 

Will laughed. Once, harsh and not very happy. He rubbed his face with both hands and then Jem watched as pieces of his persona slid back into place. The smile was back in place by the time they were crossing the street back to the girls who hadn't chased after them. They could see that no one had been trampled so there was no need to chase them. 

It was probably practicality but Jem wondered sometimes how much Ella actually knew. She might have been giving them space because she knew they were having a moment. She might have been giving them space because she thought they were idiots.

Will made a show of checking both ways before they crossed back to the street lamp where the girls were waiting for them. Jem kept a little more space than they really needed. That syrupy lie was still calling to him and he didn’t trust himself. Will was ahead of him and he let that distance grow as Will stopped in front of his sister. 

She had her arms crossed and her best impression of Linette Herondale's disapproval written across her face. 

"Hi, Ell," Will said. 

"Were you dropped on your head as a baby?" she asked. 

"Is that an admission of guilt? Did you drop me? Overturn the cradle and kick me about with your tiny toddler feet?" Will asked. 

Ella ignored all of this. "Don't play in traffic." 

"Ella, I hunt demons for a living. That carriage is not the most dangerous thing I have seen this week." 

She sighed. 

Will stood up a little straighter and folded his hands behind his back like a schoolboy at lessons. He spoke in a syrupy sweet voice, "I promise, Miss Ella, that I will not go out in the street without holding your hand ever again." 

She huffed. 

"I can't tell if she is genuinely angry with you or not," Jem said. 

"Tessa," Ella said turning around, seeking someone to take her side. 

Tessa wasn't there. Ella turned fully around and glanced up the street. 

Tessa hadn't gone far. 

Parked alongside the road, horses still hitched but no footman or driver present was a battered-looking carriage. It had all the trappings of having once been grand but it had been stripped of luxuries and left to deteriorate. The curtains were gone, the paint was faded, the padded seat for the drive was ripped and the stuffing was coming out. Tessa stood beside it, her hand against the door.

Jem felt Will looking at him. His attention had weight. Jem couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look at him. He put his attention on Tessa instead. She was frowning at the carriage. 

On the door was the remains of a symbol picked out in gold paint. Jem came to stand beside Tessa and look at it. A pair of snakes, curled into a circle, each swallowing the other's tail. She traced the line of it and then let her hand drop. 

"Are you alright?" Jem asked. 

"I've seen this before," she said. 

"An ouroboros?" 

She glanced at him and then shook her head. "No, this carriage. Back then, it had pink curtains, or maybe the lady inside it was wearing pink," she was looking at it like she'd seen a ghost. 

There was nothing particularly interesting about the dilapidated old thing. The symbol was a bit unusual for a crest but firms sometimes had their crests painted on carriages used for business. It had likely been sold at auction after some merchant's ship had failed to come in. Jem wasn't sure what kind of business would choose a symbol like this but it didn't strike him as sinister. 

“Back when?” Jem asked. 

“My mother died when I was young. One of the last memories I have of her was walking back through the town together and a carriage stopped beside us. She had an argument with the woman inside. I think it was a woman. One of their footmen, perhaps, he might have been a footman, tried to grab me and pull me away,” Tessa trailed off. 

She pressed her hand on the door of the carriage, fingers brushing the painted symbol again. Jem started to say something but she cut him off with the end of the story. 

“After we got home, she left. She said she wasn't going to let anything bad happen to me and then she left. She never came back. I never found out the whole story. My great-grandfather won’t speak of it and I don’t think my uncle ever knew.” 

Her voice was soft and faraway and Jem nearly reached out for her but they didn’t know each other nearly well enough for that. He wanted to take her hand or touch her back or maybe pull her into a hug. She seemed profoundly alone, standing there, talking about her family. 

"Hey! Get away from there!"

The voice startled Tessa who spun to look back at the man who had called it out. Jem had forgotten that she wasn't glamoured. The rest of them were invisible to the mundanes around them but she’d waved off the rune with a reminder that it wouldn’t work. 

The drunk man was shaking his fist. Ella startled and her hand went for a weapon but stopped on the hilt. Jem blinked at the stranger. 

Will stepped in before anyone else could think of something to say. His glamour rune was already deactivated when he stepped up and stood just a little too close to Tessa. She looked at him but all his attention was on the angry drunk who had stormed over. Tessa turned back to the mundane as he stumbled over a bit on the pavement and wavered to a stop. 

Will was tall and broad enough that just his silhouette could be intimidating. He knew how to play to that and was leaning in just enough to loom a bit. Tessa was tall and frowning and nearly as intimidating as he was. Will settled into a big false smile while her expression remained severe and the drunk took a half step back and Jem didn’t blame him. 

“This is a lovely carriage,” Will said with a big smile. He rapped on the door of it. “Excellent craftsmanship.” 

Tessa cast him a glance but he didn’t slow down. He was rambling a little, playing up the London accent and playing down the Welsh vowels. Even in leather gear, Will projected the character of the young English Gentleman very well when he wanted to. He had switched from trying to be physically intimidating to using the weight of social rank to be intimidating. 

“Is he trying to be an ass?” Ella muttered to Jem.

“I think that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Jem whispered back. 

The two of them stood there, unseen, like an audience at a play. The man in front of them was probably in his forties. He was a bit skinny and a bit rough around the edges but he didn’t look like a threat. Will softened his expression a little. Not kind but not quite as hostile as he’d been a minute before. 

Will never handled his emotions well after the pull had tried to drown them. Watching him bounce between reactions made Jem want to pull him away to some quiet corner and hold him until they had both calmed down enough to behave properly. That was impossible and instead, he was stuck on the sidelines, watching Will trying not to fall apart in front of an audience. 

“I didn’t steal it,” the man said. 

“Course not,” Will agreed. “But where did you get it?”

Jem sighed and asked, “Are you compelling this poor man?”

Will ignored him and smiled at the man who looked more and more disoriented. 

“Listen, nobody’s been out at that house for years. They just left the carriage on the street. Not even in the carriage house. I didn’t steal it. Not my fault nobody had seen the thing.” 

“So you have the sight, that’s interesting,” Will said conversationally.

“Which house?” Tessa asked. 

The man blinked at her, clearing his head from the compulsion rune that Will must have been using. Jem hadn’t even seen him draw it. It was a small rule and they probably wouldn’t get into that much trouble for breaking it but it still annoyed him. Will played fast and loose with the law when it suited him and Jem wasn’t in the mood to clean up the mess. 

Jem muttered an insult in Chinese as a warning and Will flashed him a grin before turning his attention back onto the poor mundane. At least it was easier to ignore the appeal of the pull when Will was being an ass. 

“That ain’t your business,” the man said to Tessa. 

“Now, now. It’s a good question,” Will said. “Which house?”

A blink as the rune caught his attention again. The man said, “Shade. The old Shade place. It’s out the other side of the Shambles. People don’t go round there. Say it’s haunted. Weird place.” 

“Sounds scary,” Will said. 

“Now you’re just mocking, stop,” Jem muttered. 

“Why don’t you go have another drink, here, it’s on me,” Will said handing the man a coin from his pocket and then turning him around and giving him a push back towards the tavern he had just left. He stumbled again and then kept going. The door to the tavern swung open in a rush of chaos and noise and lamplight and swallowed him whole. 

“Was that necessary?” Jem asked. 

“Maybe not but he did have the air of a drunk looking for a fight and the two of you would have gotten far angrier with me if I’d had to punch him. And we wouldn’t have learned about the probably haunted Shambles Shade house,” Will said.

“The Shambles is a street,” Tessa said distantly. 

Jem looked at her. She had turned back from watching the drunk walk away and was instead frowning at the carriage. Her expression was unreadable. Jem reached out and put his hand on her arm and turned her back to look at him. She blinked up at him like she’d forgotten he was there. 

“What do you need?” Jem asked. 

“Are we going?” Will asked. 

“Going?” she asked. 

“Going to see the Haunted Shade House on the Shambles street where people brought the children they could successfully kidnap?” Will said. “And here I thought York was going to be boring.” 

Jem exhaled hard and Will ignored him. Tessa looked upset. Her expression was too tight and she wasn’t looking directly at any of them. She chewed on her bottom lip and took a moment to gather herself. Will was already turning it over like pieces of a puzzle or a mystery in a paperback novel that he wanted to solve. Jem could feel the energy of it. This was exactly the kind of distraction Will had been dying for since this mess had started. 

“My mother probably died in that house and if you’re right that they tried to take other children, those children probably died in that house as well,” she said in a deathly calm voice that broke through Will’s burgeoning glee at having a mystery to investigate. His expression smoothed out. Tessa met his eye when she added, “You could be a little less happy about the prospect of poking around the aftermath of other people’s misery.” 

Will blinked, opened his mouth, and hesitated. He rarely hesitated but here he was, staring at her and staring like he couldn’t find the words. Usually, he liked it when she bit back at him but he’d hit a nerve this time and she was mad at him. 

“Why do you think she-” he started and then finished, “They tried to take you so she went after them.” 

“And never came home,” Tessa said. “There was a funeral but all I know is that her body was recovered so she could be laid to rest. The last time I saw this symbol, was the last day I saw her alive.” 

“I’m sorry,” Will said and he meant it. Jem could feel how much he meant it. “I shouldn’t have turned it into a curiosity or an armchair mystery.” 

Tessa nodded and looked back at the symbol and the silence stretched into an awkward thing that hung in the air. Even Ella’s natural inclination to smooth over the rough edges with charm was silent. Tessa’s expression demanded it and they all waited on her. 

“Would you still go?” she asked in a softer voice. 

“Is that what you want?” Jem asked before Will could stick his foot any farther into his mouth. 

“I’d like to see where it happened, just to know,” she said. 

“Then we’ll go,” Ella said. 

Tessa turned away from the carriage but it wasn’t Ella she looked at, it was Will. He gave her a smile and she nodded. They struck some agreement in that glance and when Tessa turned in the direction they needed to go, Will fell into step beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I leave to you to decide whether the Cecily climbing a demon and then marrying Gabriel bit there is a direct reference to Benedict turning into a worm. I do not plan to have Benedict appear in this story and I will not directly confirm that he had demon pox and turned into a giant worm and ate all his servants and ended up being defeated by a bunch of teenagers in both this world and in the canon world.
> 
> Report cards are eating my brain so updates will continue to be slow. We just came off online learning and I haven't actually interacted personally with some of these kids at all in nearly 2 months. Does he know the difference between 2D and 3D shapes? No idea! Can she decode vowel digraphs in words? I don't know, she could in November but that was a long time ago!! So now I have to do a huge pile of extra assessment before I can write the reports and uhhhgh. Usually I have lots of day to day observations to use but not this year.


End file.
